The Spoiler

The Spoiler is the last of my readings from the NPR summer reading list. Generally, it goes like this: London's tabloids are in a cut-throat competition to scoop one another in the late 1990s, just as the age of the internet is dawning. The book's protagonist, Tamara Sims, is caught in the rush when she is commissioned to write a piece on the life and times of Honor Tait, one of the country's great war correspondents.

Several times I was tempted to give up on The Spoiler altogether, but then I'd turn it over and read the reviews: "A cracking plot, alive with twists and turns and meaning" - The [London] Times and "Extremely funny and sharply observed" - the Guardian and "...a darkly, deliciously witty read" - The Independent. The reviews (and NPR) couldn't all be wrong. Could they? Unfortunately, for me, the answer was yes.

More than once I found myself wondering what I was missing. Was this a farce, in the style of Confederacy of Dunces? (Now there's a book I never should have read.) Every so often I would decide that it was, and then The Spoiler became almost funny, but then I'd change my mind and decide that this book really was intended to be taken seriously. To farce or not to farce? I still don't know. Equally frustrating was that Annalena McAfee alternates between clearheaded, fabulous writing and truly tying her sentences in knots. Several times I skipped entire paragraphs or skimmed multiple pages simply because I couldn't take anymore of the meandering, let's-play-thesaurus prose. (I should add that never once did I need to go back to see what I'd missed - evidently, you can skim heavily and still get the gist.)  Also, there are many, many characters who seemed to exist entirely for McAfee's amusement (or word count). That is, they didn't appear to have any real relevance to the story (such as the Monday night salon gang), and their stories neither started, stopped, or intertwined in any meaningful way. Other characters seemed to have stories with real direction, but then they just disappeared in the last pages, leaving me wondering what the point was. Similarly, both Tamara and Honor Tait seemed to have back stories that were never fully revealed and didn't serve a great deal of (any?) purpose. Even more, I found the most interesting plot line - the coming Internet age - to be the least explored and, therefore, the most disappointing. Finally, I really did not like either Tamara or Honor, but given my litany of other complaints, it seems that hardly matters.

You've probably gathered, but I was tremendously disappointed in this book. There was a lot of promise here, and McAfee clearly has the chops for it, but the book was dragged down by unsympathetic characters and plodding prose. One star.