Ok, I’m only halfway through, but this book is certainly something to have on one’s summer reading list. Sally Jay Gorce, the main character of the novel, is like the polar opposite of Esther Greenwood, the main character of Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight, and Dorothy Parker on Ritalin. Dundy’s characterization is wonderful, and the dialogue is effortless. And the situations Sally gets into are well worth reading. In between all the shenanigans, there is cutting social and cultural critique, as well as a view into the Paris of the late 1950s.
Sally’s thoughts on getting onto the bar at the Ritz:
“Very jeune fille I was, jewelless and all [...] and as full of safety pins as ever. I probably had one safety pin to every two of those gorgeous creatures’ tiny, gleaming, well-sewn, well-hidden hooks-and-eyes. But what the hell, I told myself, it wasn’t as if I were one of them or even competing with them, for heaven’s sake, I was merely a disinterested spectator at the Banquet of Life. The scientist dropping into the zoo at feeding time. That is what I told myself.”
The Dud Avocado, by Elaine Dundy
NYRB press, ISBN 978-1-59017-232-2
260pp.
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