Listen to a sample
The Dud Avocado
- Author
- Elaine Dundy
- Narrator
- Erin Bennett
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 20 January 2026
- Run Time
- 9 hours 47 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
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 program that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realizes 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?
Critics Review
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“I had to tell someone how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream, and guffaw (which, incidentally, is a great name for a law firm).”
Groucho Marx
User Reviews
No reviews yet.
Details
- Author
- Elaine Dundy
- Narrator
- Erin Bennett
- Duration
- 9 hours 47 minutes
- Release Date
- 20 January 2026
- ISBN
- 9798228681804
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Fiction: general and literary, Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Classic fiction, Romance, Historical romance
Synopsis
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 program that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realizes 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?
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