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  • Published: 27 November 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143786962
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $37.00
Categories:

After the Blues




Now an adult, Debbie and her girlfriends reveal what women really say when men aren't around. Oh dear . . .!

Now an adult on L-plates, Debbie and her girlfriends reveal what women talk about when there are no men around. Prepare yourself for full-frontal comedic camaraderie.

After breaking off with both her best friend and boyfriend, Debbie runs away to the inner-city world of punk rock, dodgy jobs, new mates and R-rated adventures.

It’s the kaleidoscopic 1980s, a time of perms, shoulder pads, Blondie and Bowie, prawn cocktails, fondue parties and mistaking promiscuity for feminism. The blokes are laughing all the way to the sperm bank – of course they’re for ‘free love’ as they don’t have to pay for it.

Preyed upon by married men and misogynistic bosses, girlfriends are the only people you can rely on. Debbie’s female pals are her human Wonderbras – uplifting and supportive. But it’s not until the girls’ night out that these friends really peel off to their emotional undies … And it’s a psychological striptease which reveals some jaw-dropping truths.

With equal parts humour and pathos, Kathy Lette, one of the pioneering voices of contemporary feminism, exposes all the fun and foolish things girls do when scrabbling to find their high-heeled feet in the world.

  • Published: 27 November 2017
  • ISBN: 9780143786962
  • Imprint: Vintage Australia
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 288
  • RRP: $37.00
Categories:

About the author

Kathy Lette

Kathy Lette is a celebrated and outspoken comic writer who has an inimitable take on serious current issues. She is the author of fifteen bestselling novels including Puberty Blues which was made into a major film and a TV miniseries, Mad Cows which was also made into a film, starring Joanna Lumley, and How to Kill Your Husband (and other handy household hints), which was staged by the Victorian Opera. She pioneered smart, funny, feminist fiction and has been published in seventeen languages.

Kathy is an autodidact (clearly it's a word she taught herself) but has honorary doctorates from Southampton and Wollongong universities, and a Senior Honorary Fellowship from Regent's University London.

She is an ambassador for Plan International and the National Autistic Society UK. Kathy lives in Sydney and London, and can often be found at the Savoy Hotel drinking a cocktail named after her. She cites her career highlights as once teaching Stephen Fry a word and Salman Rushdie the limbo, and scripting Julian Assange's cameo in the 500th episode of The Simpsons.

Visit her website at www.kathylette.com to read her blog, follow KathyLetteAuthor on Facebook, @KathyLette on Twitter and @kathy.lette on Instagram.

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Praise for After the Blues

After the Blues, returns the setting to Australia and is a kind of follow-up to Puberty Blues. The surfie chicks, now older, are still struggling through relationships with men of epic insensitivity, very few of whom are aware of a different era. The book’s various chapters are written in different styles: first and third person, letters and a diary. The theme — of failed and failing relationships — and the humour found among even the most depressing situations provides the unity. Perhaps the most remarkable chapter is the first-person anecdote, Free Kick. Something of a literary tour de force, it is in the form of a revelation by a football groupie of the rules and the reality of the situation. Perhaps a few of Lette’s quips become a little wearing but most strike me as acute.

Bruce Beresford, The Australian