The Spoiler – Annalena McAfee

The Spoiler Annalena McAfee

The book is set in London during the 1990s and follows two female newspaper employees. Honor Tait is an eighty-year-old seasoned veteran while Tamara Sim is a new graduate that puts together lists for a gossip newspaper. Tamara is sent to interview Honor, with the intent to dish on her personal life. However, the elderly woman is known for being tricky and isn't willing to give up details about her private life without a fight. As the two women clash and each paper is out to get the highest amount of sales, the stakes get higher and more desperate. deft and impressive debut novela dark hyper-comedyset in London in the late 1990s during the height of the newspaper wars just before the dot-com tidal wave.

The Spoiler, Annalena McAfee's first novel for adults, is, the author insists, not based on Martha, nor any of the other distinguished women journalists of her era. Yet her heroine, Honor Tait, (born 1917) bears an uncanny resemblance to the woman whose fearless reporting from the Spanish Civil War and the front line during the Second World War made her a legend as much as her messy private life, which included a stormy marriage to Ernest Hemingway. Honor, "the doyenne of British journalists", is even confused with Martha by young Tamara Sim (born 1970), sent to interview her on her 80th birthday and whose life coincides so tumultuously with Honor's.

When Honor Tait is asked what advice, she would give a young woman journalist starting out today, she rounds on her questioner in true Gellhorn style: any advice would apply just as much to young male journalists. When pressed, Honor's advice is the same as that she has always given: "an ability to really see... to champion the weak and to shine a searchlight in the darkest corners of human experience."

Published:  Harvill Secker.   Edition: 2011. ISBN 9781846555183.

Genre: Comedy/Satire.

Details: Soft cover, paperback.  Consists of 309 pages.  Size 15cm x 23,5cm. Thick 2,4cm. Weight 510 grams.

Condition: Book in good condition, inside pages clean with no inscriptions. 

Price R65.00                  Collection possible Shipping would be extra.                               Product: BF0106