Ethel Sloan
ONE AMERICAN WOMAN'S DEVISTATING EXPERIENCE OF LIFE DOWN
UNDER
After a hellish two-year stay in Australia her
impressions are seen through anything but rose-coloured glasses.
Ethel Sloan with husband Bernie and their two sons left
New York with visions of a private tennis court overlooking the surf,
aborigines and kangaroos just around the bend. After a hellish two-year stay in
Sydney, Ethel’s impressions are seen through anything but rose-coloured
glasses. Australian women in the late 70’s are seen as "wrinklies"
after thirty.
Husband Bernie was "the biggest thing since
MacArthur" at the advertising agency; sons Paul and Steven started at a
“Dickensian” public school with regular canings and warm curdled milk.
Ethel on the other hand didn't/couldn’t fit the
Sydney stereotype. Solitary vermouth or Valium helped pass the days. She
observers how enervated housewives don't play tennis, use time-saving
appliances, or even visit each other; while men remain lean and vital, women
retreat to household chores and turn fat by forty.
She talks about geysherlike washing machines,
stolen cars, keystone-kops-like police and Australian idiom "English isn't
always English", and “Not to worry”, not to mention flying cockroaches,
broken down tourist buses, and school canteens.
Nobody cared about sharks at the beach, skin
cancer, atrophy of human potential; returning to exercise classes and expansive
neighbours seemed like coming out of Purdah.
A wonderful little book particularly for those who grew up in Sydney's North Shore in the 70's and can relate to the idiosyncrases of the time tho perhaps with not such a critical eye.
A wonderful little book particularly for those who grew up in Sydney's North Shore in the 70's and can relate to the idiosyncrases of the time tho perhaps with not such a critical eye.
ISBN 10: 020713698X
ISBN 13: 9780207136986
Publisher: Angus & Robertson Publishers, Australia
Date published: 1979
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