The King's English Bookshop

A spoiler, in newspaper parlance, is a story that supersedes a planned scoop from another paper, stealing its thunder. This is only one of the games journalist played in the 1990s when their reign was all-powerful and the internet was a looming threat on the horizon dismissed by many—and it’s only one of the targets for the witty eye and acerbic pen of Annalena McAfee. When the legendary but elderly war correspondent known as “The Newsroom Deitrich,” Honor Tait, is forced by her editor to endure an interview with an upstart reporter, she does not submit gracefully. For her part, the neophyte Tamara doesn’t listen to a thing her ancient subject says about journalism or her professional past, ignoring stories of D Day and Berchestgarten, Vietnam and Korea, prodding when Honor refuses to talk about photographs taken with Franco, with Frank Sinatra, with Marilyn Monroe. Meanwhile, the octogenarian is appalled at the obvious ignorance and lack of preparation of the young woman, and each clings to her convictions with tenacity: Honor’s her belief that it is the story that’s the point, not the reporter and that she will protect her privacy; Tamara, her determination to expose that privacy in order to “humanize” the story she’s been hired to tell. In the days that follow, Honor willfully throws out the detritus of her past while Tamara engages in a persistent campaign to expose that past. The shenanigans that ensue as Tamara pursues her story in the offices of the paper and in the society that Honor inhabits, are alternately hilarious and affecting. The pace ratchets up, proposed story lines tangle, unravel, reweave themselves into new patterns, until, despite the efforts of nearly all concerned, truth comes out. This hilarious indictment of journalism as it’s practiced—or was until Rupert Murdoch’s company was exposed in all its glory—is not only entertaining, it also explores interesting themes from love to family to journalism to what it took 80 years ago to be a woman with a serious career and what it takes today. In addition, it’s a brilliantly plotted, witty, and very moving novel.