Cover of The Freudian Slip by Marion von Adlerstein

Hachette Australia
9780733628962
$32.99
Paperback - C Format
December 2011
400 pages
Society & culture: general

Scan Codes

If your phone can scan barcodes or QR codes with its camera, you can quickly store information about this title.

The Freudian Slip

Marion von Adlerstein

Sydney, 1963. Three young women are taking on the world of advertising. Don Draper wouldn't stand a chance. And Marion knows ... she was there!

Early sixties in Sydney. Women wear princess-line dresses, edge-to-edge duster coats, gloves, perfectly matched handbags and shoes and seamed stockings. They are defined by the vital statistics of their bust, waist and hip measurements and if they are over thirty they re over the hill. Kings Cross is bohemian, Paddington is pre-gentrified and the crowd at Beppi s and the Ozone charge their boozy lunches to job numbers.

At the advertising agency Bofinger Adams Rawson & Keane, two talented women hold important creative roles. One, Bea, is a copywriter. The other, Desi, is a television producer. Because they are successful in their work and rewarded by it, few of their colleagues know how adept they are at mismanaging their private lives.

Anxious to join this starred twosome is a young secretary named Stella, who embodies all the qualities for success ambition, dedication, energy, efficiency except creative talent. In its absence she relies on stealth, flattery and plagiarism, to walk, in her Jane Debster toe-peepers, all over the others in realising her ambition.

She succeeds. At least, for a while ...

About the Author

Born in Sydney, Marion von Adlerstein worked as an advertising copywriter in Melbourne, London and New York in the fifties and sixties. Between 1976 and 1998 she held several posts with Vogue Australia publications, including Travel Director. During those years Marion wrote about many subjects, including fashion, beauty and interiors. She is the author of THE PASSIONATE SHOPPER and THE PENGUIN BOOK OF ETIQUETTE, both published by Penguin. THE FREUDIAN SLIP is her first novel.

Other titles by Marion von Adlerstein

Staff Review

What a perfect summer read! Desi, Bea and Stella are engaging and intriguing characters, who jump off the page and pull you into their world of Sydney in the 1960’s. In the same way Paper Giants did on TV, The Freudian Slip evokes a Sydney bearing little resemblance to the one we know today – the Opera House is under construction, Paddington is a slum, de facto partnerships are shamed and a woman with a career is a rarity. But it is also a time of change and innovative ideas, determined women, beehives and fabulous fashion. This was such an entertaining read, and is an essential item for every woman’s beach bag this summer.

Belinda Kelso – Hodder Publicity Coordinator