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The Dud Avocado (New York Review Books Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Elaine Dundy
Creator: Terry Teachout
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $5.33
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 37994
Media: Paperback
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5 x 0.8
ISBN: 1590172329
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781590172322
ASIN: 1590172329
Publication Date: June 5, 2007
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Product Description
The Dud Avocado follows the romantic and comedic adventures of a young American who heads overseas to conquer Paris in the late 1950s. Edith Wharton and Henry James wrote about the American girl abroad, but it was Elaine Dundy’s Sally Jay Gorce who told us what she was really thinking. Charming, sexy, and hilarious, The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status when it was first published and it remains a timeless portrait of a woman hell-bent on living.
“I had to tell someone how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream, and guffaw (which, incidentally, is a great name for a law firm).” –Groucho Marx
"[The Dud Avocado] is one of the best novels about growing up fast..." -The Guardian
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
Yay, yay for Sally Jay! August 21, 2003
Megami (Darwin, Australia)
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
The narrator of this story, Sally Jay, seems to have a lot in common with that other literary single-girl (pre-Bushnell days) Holly Golightly. She manages to combine innocence and world-weariness, rolling with her situation, no matter how chaotic it becomes. If anything, Sally Jay is Holly's older, slightly tougher sister. A young woman who has been running away all her life, gets the chance to run away to Paris thanks to an avuncular uncle, and lives a pink-haired bohemian existence, trying to experience life to the full - affairs with older men, hanging out with artists, nights at the Ritz followed by dingy student cafes. In the odd beginning chapter (it feels like you have missed an introductory chapter, and it takes awhile before you feel like you know what is going on) she meets a boy/man she has always had a crush on, and her chaotic life becomes even messier. One of her descriptions of him - `I didn't know anyone he'd actually been wrong about - except of course me, but then as we know I am totally incomprehensible to everyone including myself' is shown by the end to be sadly true.This is a well-written book - cleverly hiding its sinister elements in the light and deft descriptions Sally Jay gives of her life. You feel that sometimes she is trying to kid herself and the reader that really, everything's going to be all right. This is a genuinely entertaining read that still manages to encompass some big themes - the search for happiness and acceptance; making priorities in life; disillusionment and what it can do to temperament. Sally Jay is sure to stay with this reader for a long time.
 a gift January 4, 2002
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Years ago, I came across this book at Blackwell's bookshop in Oxford and absolutly devoured it. I let my mother borrow it, an aunt, several friends and then lost my copy in the mix of it all. Since I was then living in NYC, it was impossible to come by a copy so I ended up buying about 10 copies and giving them as gifts to friends over the years. Dundy's prose isn't remarkable, but her youthful expression, her ways of seeing the artistic world surrounding her, the blissful madness of a young twenty-year-old alone in Paris all make this a tresure. Find a copy. Share it.
 Maybe just too old? September 5, 2007
Tea Time (United States)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Dull. Insipid. Unfunny. Hard to believe this was ever the way people acted or thought. And I'm 60, so it's not like I can't remember the era.
A funny, witty book with a rare spirit October 2, 1997
ramona.liberoff@kpmg.co.uk (London, UK)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
It isn't often that you can read something which qualifies as both a modern feminist classic and makes you laugh out loud. I loved the descriptions of early 20-th century Paris, could sympathise with the heroine's cads and catastrophes. This is a book to read if you want to walk on the bohemian side. For anyone who's ever walked around in evening dress the morning after.
A hilarious 1958 book about Americans in Bohemian Paris September 12, 1998
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Elaine Dundy's book will have you laughing out loud at protagonist Sally Jay Gorce's Parisian misadventures. From the first page, Sally Jay's intelligent, somewhat addled but wildly sarcastic voice entices the reader as she relates her exploits as a young American actress in Paris, complete with stories of drunken carousing, falling in and out of love, dancing in gay bars, dining with aristocrats, coldly sizing up her spoiled Ivy League expatriate friends, and losing her passport along with her temper, among other madcap doings. Just goes to show that, 40 years ago, (who knew?) Americans in Paris were drinking, smoking, sleeping around, staying out all night and hankering for new experiences. This well-written, very entertaining book will be a real eye-opener for readers who think that America in the 1950s was populated exclusively with straight-laced, Ozzie-and-Harriet types.
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