Melinda Houston worked as a TV critic for more than a decade.
Nicky Pellegrino chuckles at author's bird's eye view of reality TV and ad execs.
Sometimes all you want from a novel is entertainment, a story to put a smile on your face, with an equal balance of light and dark. Since fiction loves murder, mayhem and misery, this can be surprisingly difficult to find.
Kat Jumps The Shark (Text) by Australian journalist Melinda Houston
is all about entertainment. The title references the moment in the US comedy show Happy Days where the Fonz jumped a shark on water skis and the series lost all credibility. This debut novel stretches credibility pretty thinly itself at points, but it's charming enough for that not to really matter. And I suspect its portrayal of the TV and advertising industries, at least, is deadly accurate.
The story is set in Melbourne where Kat Kelly is a location manager working on a hot new TV series Survivor:CBD (the contestants must sleep rough and live on food foraged from dustbins). It's a stressful, high-pressure job but at the end of every day Kat goes home to the beautiful home she shares with her calm, organised boyfriend Miles, and Bonnie, the stepdaughter she adores. Kat is sorted; she tells herself. Why then does she feel so down?
Kat's life starts to unravel: first, her relationship comes apart; then her career follows suit. As she struggles to cope she finds support in an unlikely quarter. Wilson, the barista at her regular coffee shop, who crafts a heart from the froth in her latte, is always on hand to provide a listening ear and a medicinal whisky. So will Kat fall for Wilson or will she be sidetracked by dangerously sexy TV host Dare O'Donnell? There's never much doubt who she'll end up with; however, the predictability of the ending doesn't spoil the fun of getting there.
