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'‘I have worked at Dusty’s since I was fifteen,’ says Kathy, the pally narrator of Katharine Pollock’s novel Her Fidelity. She’s 29 now, going nowhere slowly. Kathy’s workplace is a down-at-heel Brisbane record store and her workmates are dissatisfied, heavy-drinking men: frowning Jason, pretty Ian, pervy Warren, Silent Andy, and the store’s jaded owner and namesake, Dusty. Then there’s Mel, the other woman on staff, who commands the store’s office, sorting rosters and dispensing wisdom and snacks. Seventeen years older than Kathy, Mel is gay and unfazed by her male colleagues: the implication of her sexuality within the novel is that, among men, she has nothing to prove. Kathy, by contrast, is two parts exasperation to one part propitiation in the face of her male frenemies, as she calls them. Mel is cool. Kathy is uncool and she knows it.' (Introduction)
