The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
The perfect coming-of-age, party-girl-abroad novel
“The world is wide, wide, wide, and I am young, young, young, and we’re all going to live forever!”
Newly graduated from college, Sally Jay Gorce embarks on a two-year Parisian trip abroad with the goal of experiencing freedom and following her dreams, sponsored by her Uncle’s dime and wanderlust philosophy. Sally Jay’s adventures primarily follow her connection to another American named Larry, an aspiring director, whom she realizes she is in love with in the beginning of the novel.
Sally Jay parties her way through 1950’s Paris, floating from posse to posse, cafés to dance clubs, and meeting new Big Personalities every week. Each day welcomes a new adventure but there is a tragic feeling throughout it all that is difficult to place and I can’t describe further without potentially spoiling the plot.
“Frequently, walking down the streets in Paris alone, I've suddenly come upon myself in a store window grinning foolishly away at the thought that no one in the world knew where I was at just that moment.”
Driving Sally Jay’s character arc is her innocence and naïveté, slowly she learns from her social and romantic blunders and grows into her adult self. Sally Jay will go down as one of my favorite fictional women. She is so funny, flawed, naive, and emotional. She reminds me of the introspective, innocent personalities of Cécile from Bonjour Tristesse and Selin from The Idiot. She is free spirited and a little lost, like Capote’s Holly Golightly. She is hopelessly romantic to a fault yet charmingly self aware. It was so amusing and relatable to see her try to not fall so easily for men. She’s free-spirited, hedonistic, and just can’t stand “not learning anything, not accomplishing anything, not seeing anything new.”
“I went to the window and looked out at the September evening. Though still hot with the vanished sun, the dusk, with its suggestion of autumn and nights drawing in, sent shivers of excitement up and down my spine. I thought of sex and sin; of my body and all the men in the world who would never sleep with it. I felt a vague melancholy sensation running through me, not at all unpleasant. If I could only figure out if it was Larry I was in love with, or just love, then I’d be all set, I told myself.”
I loved this book. Sally Jay’s character arc and her many relatable thoughts and feelings made this so enjoyable. Elaine Dundy’s writing style and extremely poignant voice made this unforgettable. At some points in the middle of the book, the story’s pace dragged a little bit, but everything wrapped up in a really thrilling and lovely way in the end.
Fans of Eve Babitz, Françoise Sagan, and Elif Batuman, I think you would enjoy this one.
“I reflected wearily that it was not easy to be a Woman in these stirring times. I said it then and I say it now: it just isn’t our century.”
“If I wanted so much to go-- if everything I wanted in the whole world was on the other side of that door, why didn't I just go?... What kept me frozen there in a despair composed equally of impotent rage and a strange reluctance to shatter some exquisite but invisible structure, neither the shape nor purpose of which was apparent to me? In a words, what the hell was going on?”
This book should be perfect for me the way you’ve described it ❣️