The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy [FIRST PAPERBACK PRINTING] 1961 • Signet

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

FIRST PAPERBACK PRINTING [1961] SIGNET BOOKS

Incredibly rare first Signet mass market printing w/ great illustrated cover.  

Book is in stunning condition.  Clean, tight and seemingly unread with some light shelf wear to cover.

A hugely entertaining novel of sex, lies and Americans in Paris, dripping with the sarcasm those Americans are not supposed to have.

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?