Word: journalists
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Over the course of his forty-year career as a journalist, Donaldson has covered a range of events, from the Vietnam War to the Watergate scandal to nearly every national political convention since...
...ingenious con schemes bring the text to life, and because Sheila McGough refuses to admit any wrong doing at the expense of either herself or her client, Malcolm finds her obstinate, even infuriating. Always self-analyzing, Malcolm emphasizes this dramatic battle between journalist and subject even as she elevates McGough as a compelling heroine. With a twinkle in her eye, Malcolm writes: "I don't know if I've ever had a more irritating subject...I have never before interrupted, lost patience with, spoken so unpleasantly to a subject as I have to Sheila...
...worst (which, given Malcolm's excitement and insight as a journalist, isn't very bad), the book founders on Malcolm's signature theme: the biases of the journalist as a narrator who chooses sides in the fight over which stories are true. While her last book, The Silent Woman, used the controversy over the death and estate of the suicide poet Sylvia Plath to illuminate brilliantly these questions of authority, here the justice system becomes her battleground; lawyers dispute not over matters of law but something more beautiful and strange, the power of stories to overwhelm the truth...
Because Malcolm's style emphasizes the investigations and interviews as that essence of her journalistic process, these perfect tangents and odd details tend to add up to something tangible. When she discovers inconsistencies among the documents and depositions, her words practically beam off the page: for an instant she transforms herself from cerebral commentator into Nancy Drew, and the excitement is infectious. In any case, though probably a minor work from this superior journalist,The Crime of Sheila McGoughfeels exceedingly comfortable, energetic, and lived in. This is no John Grisham thriller; instead, this may be the most innocently guilty pleasure...
...Brien has written five novels and has spend 20 years working as a political journalist...