Spill the beans, or not?

BY BEVERLY MEYER / THE FREE LANCE-STAR

PARLAYING her personal experience as a reporter for Politico, Karin Tanabe has written a début novel, “The List,” a hilarious, fast-paced, thought-provoking exposé of today’s media culture.

Adrienne Brown has landed a position at The Capitolist, the country’s hottest newspaper covering politics and society in Washington, D.C. It’s a coup any budding journalist would dream of, and Adrienne straps into the driven work environment in its Style section, focusing on any who-said-what-and-how.

With her BlackBerry as her new best friend, Adrienne is expected to pound out 10 stories a day, starting at 5 a.m. and wrapping at 7 p.m. In her “down time” she’s supposed to be trolling for interviews, tips and facts that will feed the next day’s print and online output.

It’s not long before total exhaustion starts taking its toll. Then she catches a break-she sees one of The List’s top reporters in a compromising situation with an influential senator, and so begins the wrestling match between her ambition and her conscience.

Beverly Meyer is a copy editor with The Free Lance-Star.

THE LIST

By Karin Tanabe

(Atria, $15, 370 pp. )

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