Dora is an older person who is alone in the world, partly by design, but she is obviously lonely. She is a published author of books that failed to sell. Yet, she still has an agent. Still is invited to a writer’s conference in Australia. There have been people in her life, but she is largely estranged from her daughter and others disappeared, drifted away or were just random people she met and was pulled to for a brief time. She decided long ago not to die like her father did, unable to control his body and out of it for some years. Dora still has the urge to write. We understand that her recognition of who she is and how her life has gone, including her writing, tells her she doesn’t have a good book in her.
But… Tom Rachman has a good book in him, and it is Dora’s book. The Imposters is a literary feat, organized by chapters that relate to Dora but we don’t necessary know where she fits in as. The overall story is about Dora and various people important to her. None of these people are living their authentic lives. You know who they are and can connect them to Dora title of each chapter: “The novelist’s missing brother; The novelist’s estranged daughter. The man who took all the books.” Interspersed with the chapters are pages from Dora’s journals that tell us her thoughts on the subjects of the chapters. The Imposters may well become my favorite book of 2023. It’s engaging, character driven, each chapter a stand alone short story, sketching a period in the subject’s life that is powerful. It’s not exactly sad, but you feel sympathetic to everyone, even the rather unlikeable Dora, who seems to have never found her way in the world. It is a story of a life, told through moments in lives of those who know her. It’s more than clever. It’s genius. I couldn’t put it down.
They Called me Bookworm 