The Dud Avocado

With a new preface by the author 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 singleand 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 enjoyedThe 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

Elaine Dundy was born in New York City and attended Sweet Briar College. At the end of World War II, she traveled to Europe, living in Paris before settling in London. In 1951, Dundy married the theater critic Kenneth Tynan. A novelist and writer for the BBC's satirical "That Was the Week That Was," she also composed plays and wrote biographies, including Finch, Bloody Finch: A Biography of Peter Finch and Elvis and Gladys. A resident of Los Angeles, her most recent book is her autobiography, Life Itself!