Off the Record: A Novel

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 flirting 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?