Rent The Dud Avocado

Synopsis

Elaine Dundy’s semi-autobiographical comic novel follows the misadventures of an American girl who impulsively quits college and heads off to conquer Paris in the 1950s.

Sally Jay Gorce sets out to become an actress, but what she really wants to do is experience the wide world, and to “make her wits so sharp she’s always able to guess right.” Thus she embarks on an educational program that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realizes that he’s single–and seems to want to marry her); many nights in cafes, cabarets, and jazz clubs in the company of aspiring artists and other assorted “citizens of the world”; a nightmarish trip to the Riviera; an entanglement with a charming psychopath; and a bit part in a film financed by a famous matador.

An education like this doesn’t come cheap. And just when it starts to look like our heroine will be forced back to the States to fulfill her destiny as a librarian, she meets a dashing photographer who is her perfect, eccentric match.

“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

'[The Dud Avocado] is one of the best novels about growing up fast...' -The Guardian

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