In True Pleasures, Lucinda Holdforth gives an account of her own life refracted through vignettes of the lives of famous women that have lived in Paris. Some of her subjects are writers, some courtesans and some ‘salonnières’. Holdforth went to Paris on holiday to recover from a sense of stalemate in her life. She candidly admits to abject disasters in her love life and to a failure to feel at ease in her work, first as an assistant to the deputy prime minister in a former Labor government, then as a highly paid management consultant in the corporate world. She is discreet about her experience as a political adviser, but it is clear that she found the masculine ethos of Australian political life alienating:

I would like to say that working for the Deputy Prime Minister was the most intellectually fascinating time of my life. It was amazing in many ways. But as a rule, stimulating and equal conversation between men and women is not a Labor Party strong point, maaaaate. And as for the management consultants … but that, of course, is why I am here.