'A gloriously funny novel . . . it still brings a smile to my face forty years later' JILLY COOPER

'Definitely demonic, exquisitely carved, deadly murderous comedy' DAWN POWELL, WASHINGTON POST

' Elaine Dundy's young and sexy American heroine, named (excellently) Honey Flood' LOS ANGELES TIMES

In The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy revealed the life of the young expatriate in Paris in all its hilarious and heartbreaking drama. With The Old Man and Me, written when Dundy was living in England in the early 1960s, she tackles the American girl in London, a bit older but certainly no wiser.

There's love and there's revenge. Betsy Lou Saegessor is bent on revenge. Her father is dead and to top it off, the vast fortune that should have been hers has ended up, through the second marriage of her now deceased stepmother, in the bank account of the legendary and elusive Englishman, C. D. McKee.

So Betsy sets out from New York to seduce and betray him. C .D. is fat and ugly, but boy is he sexy. Betsy follows him through the night clubs of London, grooving to jazz, smoking hash and plotting murder.

* Review coverage * Featured on the Virago website

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
It is a glimpse of a vanished world, a city which did not require a fortune if one were to carouse, an suffer, in its more pleasant quarters * The Times *
A gloriously funny novel . . . it still brings a smile to my face forty years later -- Jilly Cooper
Definitely demonic, exquisitely carved, deadly murderous comedy -- Dawn Powell * Washington Post *
In this, in a way a sequel to her classic The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy's young and sexy American heroine, named (excellently) Honey Flood this time, parks herself in London, hellbent on sleeping and conniving and boozing her way to the top * Los Angeles Times *
There isn't a dull line in it -- P. G. Wodehouse
A dedicatedly nasty little novel. Through it all, Miss Dundy's prose glitters like confetti against the gray English sky * Newsweek *
There isn't a dull line in it * P. G. Wodehouse *
A gloriously funny novel ... it still brings a smile to my face forty years later * Jilly Cooper *
A dedicatedly nasty little novel. Through it all, Miss Dundy's prose glitters like confetti against the gray English sky * NEWSWEEK *
Fierce, gamey, vixenish - as if it was bled not written and one is left with a stack of feathers and cracked bones and witch laughter. Definitely demonic, exquisitely carved, deadly murderous comedy * Dawn Powell, Book Week (NY HERALD TRIBUNE, WASHINGTON POST, SF EXAMINER) *



Book Information
ISBN 9781844081240
Author Elaine Dundy
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Virago Press Ltd
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 186g
Dimensions(mm) 196mm * 126mm * 20mm