Overview

A satirical novel by Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisted author Craig Sherborne, Off the Record stylishly skewers tabloid journalism and male vanity. Callum Smith - Wordsmith, Words for short - is a newspaper journalist of the old school. He knows how to write a story that sings, knows all the tricks of the tabloid trade. And he likes to drink with his colleagues, sometimes to flirt dangerously with young women. When his marriage blows up after a night of drinking goes way too far, Words is forced to leave the family home. Desperate to impress his estranged wife and feckless teenage son, he quits his job, taking a pay cut to work with a new online publication covering local crime. There the plum role of editor will soon be his, he reasons. To Words, 'Honesty is a thief - it steals your life.' Better to do whatever it takes to get back in someone's good books. And that is what he sets out to do, in a series of ever more calamitous, destructive and amoral adventures. Will the irredeemable Words win back his family? Or is comeuppance around the corner?

Full Product Details

9781925603248

Table of Contents

Reviews

`Sherborne's talents with narrative and poetry combine to produce a striking fiction...offering a unique, vivid portrait of his characters. With the crystallisation and compression of poetry, Sherborne explores ideas of property, freedom and loyalty, and produces a novel as beautiful in its conjunctions as the chandelier swinging over its landscapes. ' * The Australian on Tree Palace * 'A riveting piece of writing that is liable to transfix any reader who gets past the opening chapter...Sherborne is a breathtaking writer because he writes of unspeakable things with a kind of affectless gaucherie that dazzles the mind...this is an engulfing, heart-stopping book - a performance that dazzles the eyes and leaves the reader gasping for air.' * the Age on The Amateur Science of Love * `Off the Record, a page-turner so scorching it makes realism seem like a form of pornography, is about sensationalist and exploitative journalism...The narrator is such a supreme wordsmith, as Sherborne was and is, that he is known as Words, and boy can he use them as acid and anthrax in the world's water supply...It is part of Sherborne's genius - it's not too big a word - to revile and deconstruct every tabernacle of good taste...Pacy, sleek, muscled...A mesmerising portrait of how a creep of a guy (who can look very much like you or me) can weave a web in which he finds himself.' -- Peter Craven * Australian * 'Sharp, taut and sizzlingly mean, Off The Record paints a biting portrait of a hard-boiled hack you would not want on your back...It is an expertly crafted almost-satire, that, though billed as dark comedy, is a cautionary tale about the true cost of selling your professional and creative soul, and of unbridled vanity. Ruthlessly riveting.' * Herald Sun *

`Sherborne's talents with narrative and poetry combine to produce a striking fiction...offering a unique, vivid portrait of his characters. With the crystallisation and compression of poetry, Sherborne explores ideas of property, freedom and loyalty, and produces a novel as beautiful in its conjunctions as the chandelier swinging over its landscapes. ' * The Australian on Tree Palace * 'A riveting piece of writing that is liable to transfix any reader who gets past the opening chapter...Sherborne is a breathtaking writer because he writes of unspeakable things with a kind of affectless gaucherie that dazzles the mind...this is an engulfing, heart-stopping book - a performance that dazzles the eyes and leaves the reader gasping for air.' * the Age on The Amateur Science of Love *

Author Information

Craig Sherborne’s memoir Hoi Polloi (2005) was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. The follow-up, Muck (2007), won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Non-fiction. Craig’s first novel, The Amateur Science of Love (2011), won the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Best Writing Award, and was shortlisted for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and a NSW Premier’s Literary Award. His second novel, Tree Palace (2014), was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. Craig has also written two volumes of poetry, Bullion (1995) and Necessary Evil (2005), and a verse drama, Look at Everything Twice for Me (1999). He lives outside Melbourne.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available