Product details
- ISBN 9780349020884
- Weight: 267g
- Dimensions: 126 x 196mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jan 2026
- Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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'Funny, funny, funny. She's wicked and wise' GRETA GERWIG
'One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence' OBSERVER
'Scandalous and entertaining . . . Both funny and true' EVENING STANDARD
'One of the best novels about growing up fast' GUARDIAN
'This dizzying evocation of youth, sex, irresponsibility and doubt is laugh-out-loud funny' DAILY MAIL
Here was all the gaiety and glory and sparkle I knew was going to be life if I could just grasp it . . .
Sally Jay Gorce is a girl hellbent on living. It's the 1950s and she's an American in Paris: witty, headstrong and disaster-prone. She dyes her hair pink, wears evening dresses in the daytime and prowls the Left Bank in search of love, adventure and fame. 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?
As effervescent as a champagne cocktail, The Dud Avocado is a deliciously funny cult classic.
INTRODUCED BY RACHEL COOKE
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!
