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Again, so sorry, normally I am a very generous and open reader, and I desperately wanted to love this book, My apologies to anyone who liked this book, but I couldn't stand it. Again, so sorry, normally I am a very generous and open reader, and I desperately wanted to love this book, but I found it completely annoying and was unable to connect with it or give any damn about it whatsoever!
Jan 25, Jeanette "Astute Crabbist" rated it it was ok Shelves: I didn't care much for this book, in fact I didn't finish it. It wasn't terrible, just kinda boring when it was billed as being funny. I'm surprised it has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity. Not that great, but as usual, I copied some things I liked from it.
I really liked this line about people who are trying too hard to be different or radical: Dec 16, Christy rated it really liked it. I can't believe this progressive novel was written in the fifties. Feb 09, Beth Bonini rated it liked it Shelves: The cover is great; the title is funny and memorable; it has a 'classic' but slightly hipster provenance; it all added up to high reading hopes.
S "You know, these American girls are just like avocados. Sadly, it just didn't deliver. Sally Jay Gorce, aspiring actress and adventuress, is all breezy voice and bad choices - but even her dramas fail to be entirely engaging. The writing can be very clever; it definitely has a certain insouciant, knowing style to it, but where was the substance? I kept getting drawn into the story, but only to be disappointed.
In the afterword, author Elaine Dundy claims that Ernest Hemingway praised her characters for all speaking differently. That may be so, but they still weren't very memorable. No one seemed real; there was no internal character development, not even for our narrator and protagonist. You can't even describe this as a "coming of age" story because Sally Jay truly didn't seem to learn anything. The "meet cute" ending - where she drops some library books on the head of a man who has supposedly been looking for her, high and low - just seemed preposterous.
Strangely enough, Dundy claims that the book is based on her own youthful adventures. My actual rating would be 2. I didn't learn anything; I wasn't emotionally engaged; all in all, it was a surprisingly forgettable reading experience. Jun 21, Anmiryam rated it it was amazing Shelves: Charming and evanescent, Elaine Dundy's novel of the madcap adventures of a young expatriate in Paris is a whirligig of a book.
Imagine an unsentimental version of Audrey Hepburn, intelligent but a bit ditzy, toss in a healthy dollop of sexual and romantic hijinks and deliver it in a rollicking voice that is never less than fresh and you will begin to get a sense of what it's like to read 'The Dud Avocado. You won't regret it.
Plus it's one of the best portraits of being young with all of it's self-centered cruelty combined with self-doubt and developing knowledge of the world I've ever read. View all 5 comments. Aug 11, G. As one of the many tiresome older-and-wiser men who populate the novel explains to her: With a couple of exceptions, the male characters are all like the avocado eater: I said it then and I say it now: Must write him soon.
Take me home… I have to catch a train… I thought vaguely of saying. Jun 08, Michael rated it it was ok Shelves: A novel that gained cult status quickly, this is a quirky story of a woman hell-bent on really living. The Dud Avocado is the type of novel you go into not really knowing what to expect and just let it take you on a journey. She is a woman that wants to live life to the fullest and experience everything that is out there for her; is it a good idea? Most definitely not, but she picks herself up and continues. She is going to make her romantic mark on Paris and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.
I find myself reminded a little of A Sport and a Pastime in parts but mainly when I think of France, the lust and passion. After that it is more similar to a beat novel with a female protagonist travelling around Paris looking for love and passion. She is smart, sexy, hilarious and frivolous; Sally Jay is sure to charm every man in the City.
At times I enjoyed the journey I was on and then there were times I just felt lost and unsure of what will happen next. The book seems to dip in and out of this feeling of excitement, full of adventures and misadventures, then it just peters out and remains a little flat. This was a really interesting tactic, I felt like her life was an enigma and every attempt to try understanding her failed.
Real people are never meant to be simple and Elaine Dundy created a truly complex character in Sally Jay Gorce. But then again this is France and they have a stereotypical reputation for being progressive. The Dud Avocado did have a very authentic feel to it. This review originally appeared on my blog; http: Feb 23, Nikki rated it it was ok Shelves: Elaine Dundy knows how to capture a scene. The parts of the book where something is actually happening work like gangbusters. The dialogue is clever but realistic.
The details are pertinent but also hilarious. If you are anything like me, this scene will pull you in. But the book has other plans. Every so Elaine Dundy knows how to capture a scene. View all 4 comments. Aug 29, Oriana rated it really liked it Recommended to Oriana by: I'm really mystified, though: I was totally sure that I'd read a glowing review of it by Emily Gould some time ago, but the internet is hiding it from me or something. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Was it not Emily but someone else? I mean, someone put it in my head that this was one to grab, I didn't just make it up.
It's a story of a twenty-something gal in Paris in the fifties being sexy and young and silly and frivolous. She sleeps with men and drinks too much and loses her passport and breaks hearts and eats decadent food and falls in love day after day after day, with a bullfighter, with a childhood pal, with a married man, with being young and without responsibilities in Paris. The voice is just fabulously wry and bubbly and engaging -- I was going to quote from it for you but I already loaned the book out, the day I finished it, because it is so so much fun.
Get it, it's so lovely! Sep 30, David rated it really liked it. I picked this one up per Terry Teachout's recommendation - he's the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, and also wrote an excellent biography of H. This is a favorite of his, and I certainly wasn't disappointed - you'd be hard pressed to find a better light reading experience. It's an innocent abroad story - Sally Jay Gorce travels to Paris, pursues acting, loses her virginity, and does all the funny things you'd expect an inexperience girl to do in a foreign city.
It's laugh-ou I picked this one up per Terry Teachout's recommendation - he's the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, and also wrote an excellent biography of H. It's laugh-out-loud funny, and how can you not like a book with great lines like "they were so violently individualistic as to be practically interchangeable" and "it's amazing how right you can be about a person you don't know; it's only the people you do know who confuse you. Jul 21, Edan rated it really liked it.
How can you not love a novel in which a man wears a suit made of pool-table cloth? In the first chapter, the narrator, Sally Jay Gorce, remarks: Some people can hack and hack away at you and nothing happens at all and then someone else just touches you lightly on the arm and you come Jan 17, Emily rated it it was amazing.
Oh man, why don't we read this instead of Catcher in the Rye? It should be that famous. Too much sex-talk, lesbians, and liberated women I guess. And while I wouldn't like the narrator if I could meet her in person, I really valued being shown somebody so different from myself. Why don't we read this instead of Hemingway!? I'd take this over old fishermen. Mar 21, Mark rated it really liked it.
Another book from the low end of the Keith Law and one that, if I was judging by its cover, I was unlikely to have ever read. Indeed, between the tastefully-posed naked woman on the front and the blurb hearkening to Tropic of Cancer one of the worst books I've ever read on the back, had I picked it up I would not have given it a shot. And that would have been my loss, because this is a hilarious story of an American girl's blunders through Paris in the 50s. It's always a surprise to me when Another book from the low end of the Keith Law and one that, if I was judging by its cover, I was unlikely to have ever read.
It's always a surprise to me when I find a book, particularly an older book, that is funny. A lot of the time, first-person narrators are completely boring, but when you get one who just has an amusing voice then it's great. In this case, Sally Jay Gorce is not exactly a reliable narrator all of the time and that is a large part of why she's funny.
Couched in these outrageous encounters where you can just feel that she's got it all wrong are extremely apt observations about life and human interaction. One about understanding perfect strangers while being confused by the people you know just made me sit up and go, "Wow! It happens rarely like that in my own life but when it does, man. The thing about Sally Jay is that she isn't likable, particularly, to the reader. Or at least not to me. But there are lots of great female characters who, if they were real people, I would never want to know.
She is absorbed in her own world and petty towards those who've slighted her, though she's mostly nice when she isn't completely engrossed in that pettiness and short-sightedness. I was kind of reminded of Holly from Breakfast at Tiffany's - the book version, that is, without that Hollywood kind of ending. Holly is not especially pleasant but the men in the book all love her and remember her fondly anyway, even when she mistreats most of them. There's a bit more of an innocence about Sally Jay, who picks bad friends more than she does wrong to people herself.
It is a book I hope to read at every decade of my life, because I think each time it will have something new to teach me. My mind was warped into a new shape by her prose and it will never be the same again.
The metaphysics she presents in the book are enacted in a way that allowed me to begin to understand that corner of philosophy. It is rigorous and brave, never allowing the reader to become complacent. It is tragic and erotic and no matter how many times you read it, it eludes your grasp. It combines deadpan humor with romantic yearning and makes you want to read more novels and maybe also try to learn Russian. Her truths are tiny knives, piercing the surface and bleeding out the illusions of life, especially life in California. You are commenting using your WordPress.
You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Skip to content This is a new take on a very old-school recipe and I found it quite tasty. A savory gelatin was just what I was looking for! Can you give the receipe?