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Review: The Dud Avocado, by Elaine Dundy
May. 21st, 2009 01:15 pmThe life of an expat American has always held a kind of allure for readers. Between the World Wars, jazz age writers and artists populated the cafes and salons of Paris, writing, arguing, drinking coffee and making art, talking poltics and guzzling champagne. And ever since then, France has been something of the holy grail for the American romantic. Its expatriate history, both real and imagined, is rich and exciting.
The years after WWII were like a collective sigh of relief for young people. War was over, time to throw themselves into life again. And among those who do so with ferocity is Sally Jay Gorce, the Dud Avocado. She's a young woman who is so full of life she doesn't begin to know how to spend it. Her ambitions finally bring her to Paris, and into the orbit of an American theater and its director with whom she decides to fall in love.
In spite of her feelings for Larry, she does tend to take up with other men at an almost alarming rate, and much of the book details her romantic entanglements and how they never quite mesh. Even her feelings for Larry prove problematic in the end, and after a vivid, frenetic and troubling year in France, all she wants is to go home and become a librarian.
It's difficult to dislike Sally unless you're scandalized by her. She's a smart girl, but she has no sense, which is as much a function of her age as of the way she's trying to live her life. Perhaps she does have an unfair advantage in rich uncle Roger who bankrolls her time in Paris, and helps her out of the enormous hole she's dug herself into. But through it all, she is just so filled with life, so open to whatever it brings that it's hard not to be rooting for her to find her destiny, no matter who or what that might be. When Sally's illusions shatter, it doesn't destroy her. She is sadder and wiser, but no less determined to find her own way.
"The Dud Avocado" is apparently one of those books which gets rediscovered by each new generation, and perhaps that's because it speaks to the youth and hope in all of us. We all start out determined to live life on our own terms, we all learn hard lessons, and if we're tough and lucky, we bounce back the way Sally Jay does, stronger for what we've experienced. I think this is a book for everyone who lives with hope and an open heart.
The Dud Avocado (New York Review Books Classics)
The years after WWII were like a collective sigh of relief for young people. War was over, time to throw themselves into life again. And among those who do so with ferocity is Sally Jay Gorce, the Dud Avocado. She's a young woman who is so full of life she doesn't begin to know how to spend it. Her ambitions finally bring her to Paris, and into the orbit of an American theater and its director with whom she decides to fall in love.
In spite of her feelings for Larry, she does tend to take up with other men at an almost alarming rate, and much of the book details her romantic entanglements and how they never quite mesh. Even her feelings for Larry prove problematic in the end, and after a vivid, frenetic and troubling year in France, all she wants is to go home and become a librarian.
It's difficult to dislike Sally unless you're scandalized by her. She's a smart girl, but she has no sense, which is as much a function of her age as of the way she's trying to live her life. Perhaps she does have an unfair advantage in rich uncle Roger who bankrolls her time in Paris, and helps her out of the enormous hole she's dug herself into. But through it all, she is just so filled with life, so open to whatever it brings that it's hard not to be rooting for her to find her destiny, no matter who or what that might be. When Sally's illusions shatter, it doesn't destroy her. She is sadder and wiser, but no less determined to find her own way.
"The Dud Avocado" is apparently one of those books which gets rediscovered by each new generation, and perhaps that's because it speaks to the youth and hope in all of us. We all start out determined to live life on our own terms, we all learn hard lessons, and if we're tough and lucky, we bounce back the way Sally Jay does, stronger for what we've experienced. I think this is a book for everyone who lives with hope and an open heart.
The Dud Avocado (New York Review Books Classics)
