'One of the best novels about growing up fast' GUARDIAN

'One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence' OBSERVER

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

The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status on first publication and remains a timeless portrait of a woman hellbent on living.

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?

* Review coverage in women's magazines * To be featured on the Virago web-site

About the Author

Elaine Dundy (1921-2008) grew up in New York City and Long Island. After graduating from Sweet Briar College in 1943, she worked as an actress in Paris and, later, London, where she met her future husband, the theater critic Kenneth Tynan.

Dundy wrote three novels, The Dud Avocado (1958), The Old Man and Me (1964), and The Injured Party (1974); a play, My Place (produced in 1962); biographies of Elvis Presley and the actor Peter Finch; a study of Ferriday, Louisiana; and a memoir, Life Itself!

Reviews
Readers turn to it again and again for its jokes, which are very funny and remain so after a dozen readings -- Rachel Cooke * Guardian *
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 *
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 *
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)
For a highly likeable and amusing narrator, who throws herself into Parisian life. A cult classic to reconnect me with France and feed my love of sharp observational humour . . . a hedonistic whirlwind in Paris and the South of France, pulled along by its whip-smart American heroine, Sally Jay Gore (out of the way, Emily In Paris). This is someone I am desperate to drink Pernod with. Where life has felt so constrained, this was such a liberating read -- Emma Reed * Daily Telegraph *
Scandalous and entertaining . . . Both funny and true * Evening Standard *
**'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 *



Book Information
ISBN 9781853815812
Author Elaine Dundy
Format Paperback
Page Count 336
Imprint Virago Press Ltd
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 260g
Dimensions(mm) 132mm * 201mm * 22mm