'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?' (Publication summary)
Dedication: For Janet
'With a regular stream of vulgar tweets from President Trump and a tsunami of sexual harassment charges against prominent men, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the nasty side of masculine privilege in our current world. The narcissistic man who manipulates others to satisfy his sense of power has become a recognised figure in public life. Craig Sherborne’s Off the Record is a satire that relies on reader outrage at such behaviour, but it is hard to avoid a sense that he has been unlucky with the timing of this novel. There are times when the large-scale absurdities of the real world can make a satire look tame. The fictional world Sherborne creates is a kind of petty provincial version of the masculine privilege and bullying behaviour we see in the daily news feed.' (Introduction)
'Craig Sherborne has been weaving fictions and wheedling words about the emotional atrocities of everyday life for a while now. His two memoirs, Muck and Hoi Polloi, are among the most amazing of their kind in Australian literature, even if the portrait of the author’s mother comes across as an act of literary matricide.' (Introduction)
'Craig Sherborne has been weaving fictions and wheedling words about the emotional atrocities of everyday life for a while now. His two memoirs, Muck and Hoi Polloi, are among the most amazing of their kind in Australian literature, even if the portrait of the author’s mother comes across as an act of literary matricide.' (Introduction)
'With a regular stream of vulgar tweets from President Trump and a tsunami of sexual harassment charges against prominent men, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the nasty side of masculine privilege in our current world. The narcissistic man who manipulates others to satisfy his sense of power has become a recognised figure in public life. Craig Sherborne’s Off the Record is a satire that relies on reader outrage at such behaviour, but it is hard to avoid a sense that he has been unlucky with the timing of this novel. There are times when the large-scale absurdities of the real world can make a satire look tame. The fictional world Sherborne creates is a kind of petty provincial version of the masculine privilege and bullying behaviour we see in the daily news feed.' (Introduction)
