The Spoiler by Annalena McAfee

I'm not sure what to make of The Spoiler. It's billed as a dark satire on the British press. And it's true that parts of the book are very funny. But parts of the story are just plain sad (namely, the last one-third of the book). Tamara is a young freelance writer who usually works on fluff pieces like Fab to Flab and Chest Hair Chic. When a plum assignment--a profile of renowned war correspondent/journalist Honor Tait--falls in her lap, she thinks this is her big chance for a real journalism career. Honor, now in her 80s, was once the glamour girl of serious journalism (the girl with the low-cut neckline and the high IQ). Honor agrees to do Tamara's interview only because her publisher is releasing a new collection of Honor's old articles and thinks the publicity would be good for book sales. Suffice it to say that the 2 women do not get along and the interview does not go well. And soon rumors about Honor are spreading. My sympathies were more with Honor, whose husband has died and whose best friend, in the throes of Alzheimer's, no longer even recognizes her. She's in poor health, in shaky financial straights,and lonely and realizes that after all her years of hard work, what people will remember about her is the lurid tabloid stories that Tamara is at least partially responsible for. I had a tiny bit of sympathy for Tamara, who was trying to establish herself on a better career path while dealing with a drug addict brother. But she really seemed to have no clue about journalistic ethics and never seemed to think about the consequences of what she was writing. This story is set in the 1990s and some of the funniest parts involve that newfangled internet, which most of the journalists are convinced is just a passing fad.