Book Review: Falling Star by Diana Dempsey

If the news articles and widely shared anecdotes are anything to go by, ageism is alive and well in the entertainment industry–particularly if the individual in question is female. Where males are able to transition into middle age or later with labels such as “distinguished”, their female counterparts are simply, well, old.

In Diana Dempsey’s debut Falling Star, forty-something prime time news anchor Natalie Daniels as she struggles to deal with exactly this issue–and more beside. With her years of experience and solid qualifications, Natalie is a force to be reckoned with, but commands a fee that undermines the budgets of new station manager, who needs to cut costs and improve ratings if he’s to see a cent of his bonus. And what better way to do so than oust Natalie and replace her with a young lass who will not only set the audience’s pulses racing, but who will be happy with a salary a tenth of that of Natalie?

Of course, it doesn’t take Natalie long to work out what’s going on but, terrified by the idea of her apparently increasing irrelevance, she begins to make mistakes. Small things like line flubs at first, but then bigger mess ups, like being arrested for “stalking” an interview subject. The harder she tries, the faster her career seems to be circling the drain. And as she begins to fall from the public favour, her replacement, the callous and calculating Kelly, seems to be rising to new heights.

Add to this a scheming ex-husband who will stop at nothing to get his hands on Natalie’s money (including stealing their prenup and lying about his own income), a love interest with whom a romantic involvement will create some serious conflicts of interest–and ethics–and Natalie has quite a bit on her mind.

Falling Star‘s premise is an interesting one, and I was curious to see Dempsey’s treatment of the issue of ageism in the media. Unfortunately, everything in this novel is so very black and white that it lacks the emotional impact I expected: the baddies are money-grubbing misanthropes who eschew any sort of morality in favour of getting ahead, while Natalie herself feels less like a person and more like a vehicle to carry a theme. And goodness, stop deliberately undermining yourself, Natalie!

It’s with the other characters, too, that I struggled: Natalie’s husband is so cruel and unbelievable as to be a caricature, and her competitor is the same. Though in her early twenties, she reads rather like a vacuous pre-teen, which conflicts with what we know of her background: she’s an ambitious, university-educated woman who mentored under Daniels (although this last is for some reason omitted from the POV scenes of this woman). Then there’s the love interest, who happily cheats on his fiance with Natalie and thinks nothing of it–and Natalie, despite having been cheated on herself by her ex husband, happily goes along with it all.

The plot, though buoyed by some interesting tidbits about the reporting and tv journalism worlds, struggles under the weight of these various players and the heavy-handed way in which they’re all linked together. Kevin Bacon has fewer degrees of separation than these guys. But perhaps what stops the book from really working is the fact that Natalie never really has a black moment. Sure, things begin to go downhill, but then everything starts to work out, but just sort of because. Natalie isn’t the one working her way back up to the top; rather, everything else around her begins to fall into place so that this happens. Unfortunately, this makes for an anticlimactic ending in what is otherwise a reasonable read.

Rating: (not bad)