The Dud Avocado (Virago Modern Classics)

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the dud avocado reads like a witty woman's take on the sun also rises, with the pink-haired protagonist sally jay gorce, an often silly struggling ingenue, going to parties, falling in love, and trying to find herself in paris in the fifties. eventually, she goes on a road trip to spain where she ends up as an extra on a bullfighter movie, and partying some more. unfortunately, for me the book began to drag while she was there, and i found the ending was rushed, grafted on, and out of sync with the rest of the book, though i expect fans of happy endings will find it just right. I always expect people to behave much better than I do. When they actually behave worse, I am frankly incredulous. It was autobiographical enough that her husband threatened to divorce her if she wrote a second novel. She did, and he did.

Think Daisy Miller with a dash of Fear of Flying; My Sister Eileen with a soupçon of Sex and the City; Anita Loos crossed with Allen Ginsberg." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer A first-rate reporter, [Dundy] has made The Dud Avocado into a Baedeker of neo-Bohemiahe...the atmosphere of a French student café; the folkways of hobohemia; the accents of the International Set-all these Miss Dundy has captured with sill and a degree of wit." -- The New York Times Book Review T]he question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don’t we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.” When we first make her acquaintance she is still wearing her evening dress in the morning, from the night before, Larry another American she meets is a friend/ lover?, but so is Teddy, who takes her to the Ritz, all dolled up in fancy jewellery, which somehow she manages to miss place. During the timescale of the narrative (September to the next late Summer) she joins in the lively young night life in Paris and near their villa. They go to bars and nightclubs, dance and drink, eat and drink, and get involved in acting in plays and the movies. Her impetus for this hedonism seems to be that she is young. Here she is explaining to Teddy, the rejected Italian diplomat, why he is so angry.Book Genre: 20th Century, American, Classics, Coming Of Age, Cultural, Fiction, France, Humor, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels, Travel, Young Adult

She says some pretty unpleasant things to people from time to time. But there are two things I noted about this statement. One is that young people really did feel like this well into the late ‘60s. And secondly that some of her circle did have ‘dark sinister motives’ for their actions, as Sally Jay found out later.One of the funniest books I’ve ever read; it should be subtitled Daisy Miller’s Revenge.”–Gore Vidal