Product Description

THE DUD AVOCADO gained instant cult status on first publication and remains a timeless portrait of a woman hellbent on living. It is, as the GUARDIAN observes, 'one of the best novels about growing up fast'. Sally Jay Gorce is a woman with a mission. It's the 1950s, she's young, and she's in Paris. Having dyed her hair pink, she wears evening dresses in the daytime and vows to go native in a way not even the natives can manage. Embarking on an educational programme that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realises he's single and wants to marry her); nights in cabarets and jazz clubs in the company of assorted "citizens of the world"; an entanglement with a charming psychopath; and a bit part in a film financed by a famous matador. But an education like this doesn't come cheap. Will our heroine be forced back to the States to fulfill her destiny as a librarian, or can she keep up her whirlwind Parisian existence?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #101046 in Books
• Published on: 1997-02-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
'A champagne cocktail ... Rich, invigorating, and deceptively simple to the taste ... One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence' OBSERVER 'A carbonated first novel that will set male readers to thinking sheepishly of plain wrappers' TIME MAGAZINE 'As delightful and delicate an examination of how it is to be twenty and in love and in Paris as I've ever read' SUNDAY TIMES 'Scandalous and entertaining ... Both funny and true' EVENING STANDARD

TIME MAGAZINE
'A carbonated first novel that will set male readers to thinking sheepishly of plain wrappers'

EVENING STANDARD
'Scandalous and entertaining ... Both funny and true'

Customer Reviews

Annoying character and story
The story is narrated by Sally Jay Groce, a young American girl on her own in Paris in the fifties, who falls in love constantly, has affairs without remorse, and is just too, too bored with it all. She's completely self-centered and shallow, wants only to have fun, and is living happily off her rich uncle's hefty allowance.

I enjoyed the first third of the book when I found Sally Jay's silly and immoral lifestyle somewhat interesting, but as the book wore on, it became a chore to finish. She's a pretty unlikable (if not odious) character, sounding more like forty or fifty than twenty, and the way she just floats from adventure to adventure seemed not only irresponsible and pointless, but sad.

I can assume this was quite shocking when it was published in 1958, but by now it's all been done before and better by the likes of Bridget Jones. I found "Dud" relentlessly tedious.

An American in Paris
Problem: You feel like reading something that's witty and light-hearted but not so embarrassingly girly that it makes you feel like you should be wearing fluffy pink slippers and call your beloved "snookums". You loved "Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons and "In The Pursuit of Love" by Nancy Mitford. You have been known to dream of Parisian boulevards and bohemian attic flats in Montparnasse. The thought of strolling down Boule Mich in an evening gown makes you feel all warm inside.

Solution: The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy, following the adventures and misadventures of Sally Jay Gorce. In the proud tradition of Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, Sally Jay is an American in Paris, sardonic and enamoured at the same time, and determined to soak up everything the Moving Feast of Lights can offer. In contrast to Ernst or Gertrude, though, she is more busy flitting around cafes and pursuing a very modest stage career than devoting herself to High Art. She just wants to live, damn it! And that's exactly what she does, mixing with shady aristocrats, hustlers, painters and Southern belles from the Left Bank to Biarritz.

Sally Jay's streetsmart voice conveys a great sense of time and place. The fifties slang is really cute, and it's interesting to see the how the Home-makers of America moral values prevailed even in bohemian Paris. Even though some plotlines seem a bit weak (without giving too much away: how traumatic is it to lose a passport, for example?), the charm and exuberance of this book makes it seem churlish to complain. You could definitely do worse than party in Paris with Sally Jay.

One of my all time favourite books
I fell head over heels in love with Sally Jay Gorce when I read this book. She is eccentic, intelligent, self aware, intelligent and witty
but succumbs to self doubt and lack of experience. Rarely do you encounter a character so real. This book is a joy from first sentence to last. I never wanted it to end. Perfect.