The Dud Avocado

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 youthquake classic that inspires joie de vivre – Louise Candlish, author of OUR HOUSE * Good Housekeeping *This dizzying evocation of youth, sex, irresponsibility and doubt is laugh-out-loud funny and makes you yearn to be 21 again, drinking Pernod in a pavement cafe with a handsome lover * Daily Mail ***‘A champagne cocktail … Rich, invigorating, and deceptively simple to the taste … One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height… * 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 ** ‘Both funny and true * EVENING STANDARD *

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!