Review: One More Slip by Marion Von Adlerstein

Big shout out to Anna from the Reading Room for my review copy. Thanks!

Marion Von Alderstein's 2011 novel The Freudian Slip detailing the lives of three fashionable and successful women (or, at least two of those women are successful,) in Sydney in the early 1960s was such a hit that she just had to write a sequel and bring a wonderful minor character, Isabel to the front. One More Slip moves on to the mid-1960s where Bea and Desi are still working for advertising agency BARK and juggling successful professional lives in a time when women rarely had lasting careers beyond teaching or nursing. Of course, the times are slowly changing and, or the blurb puts it, hemlines are getting shorter. Bea and Desi both have complicated personal lives and relationships, while the complications of Isabel's personal life and desires do not become entirely clear until midway through the novel. And we do get to learn more of what happens to the disgusting Stella after she is shafted to New Zealand--at first it looks like her scheming may triumph, but as the novel progresses, it becomes clear that is she who is being taking advantage of in what is perhaps the most fitting of circumstances.

There is a lot to like about One More Slip. The author displays her firsthand knowledge of 1960s Sydney, the emerging career women, changing attitudes and the odd bit of jet setting. The scenes where the dog food commercial are filmed are hilarious as are Stella's misfortunes. It's pleasing to see Tom's scheme to get revenge on Desi go awry in the most surprising of ways. However, the writing is not as polished as it should be--while the author gives detailed descriptions to places and settings, I would have liked to have seen more character building, particularly where Isabel and Desi were concerned rather than simply being confronted and surprised by their choices. I would have liked to know more about Isabel, why she felt that way and her personal struggles. I would have also liked to have seen more of a hint that this too was the right choice for Desi. It's a sensitive subject, particularly when contrasted against the setting and deserves more than to be treated as a convenient plot twist that ensures a happy ending for two major characters and disappointment to one of the novel's anti-heroes. That aside, this was a fun read in many ways and had me wondering what silly thing each of the characters would do next. I loved the epilogue at the end detailing what happened to each character--everybody got the ending they deserved.

One More Slip probably won't cater to all tastes, but is a funny, occasionally feminist read.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more