The Dud Avocado

'One of the funniest books I've ever read' - Gore Vidal * The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status on first publication and remains a timeless portrait of a woman hellbent on living. It is, as the Guardian observes, 'one of the best novels about growing up fast'. 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? * 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). - Groucho Marx Books included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley ; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame ...

Product details

• Authors: Elaine Dundy, Dundy Elaine
• Assisted by: Rachel Cooke (Introduction), Rachel Goodson (Introduction)
• Publisher: Virago Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.05.2017
• EAN: 9780349010373
• ISBN: 978-0-349-01037-3
• No. of pages: 336
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 202 mm x 22 mm
• Series: Virago Modern Classics; VMC Designer Collection; 40th Anniversary Edition; VMC; Virago modern classics; VMC Designer Collection; 40th Anniversary Edition
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Adventure, FICTION / Coming of Age, FICTION / Romance / General, Historical romance, FICTION / Romance / Historical / General, FICTION / Women, FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Action & Adventure, FICTION / Classics, Classic fiction (pre c 1945), Narrative theme: Coming of age, Classic fiction, Adventure fiction, Fiction: general and literary