Review: The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

Sally Jay Gorce, having just graduated college, is off on a Parisian adventure and her rich uncle is footing the bill.  When we first meet her, she is spending her time doing nothing in particular.  She stays out late with groups of American artists in French cafes some nights and others she spends in the arms of a married Italian man.  Then she meets an old friend Larry, falls in love with him over an afternoon glass of wine, and does everything to get him to notice her, including audition for his play, in which she successfully performs.  The book follows her around the artistic cafes and seedy gay night clubs of 1950s Paris and documents in Sally's own charming and hilarious words her trials and victories, her many lovers and various rivals.

Miss Gorce is a wonderful narrator because she is flawed and completely honest about it.  She says,  "I always expect people to behave much better than I do.  When they actually behave worse, I am frankly incredulous."  She has no delusions about herself and doesn't take herself (or anything) too seriously.  She's not usually harsh with herself; she has brief pride when she accidentally does something well or kind and she fully admits mistakes and errors in judgement when she accidentally fails.  She never gives herself too much credit, and she doesn't beat herself up about anything either.  Sally Jay knows exactly who she is and what she's like, although she pretends not to.  For a twenty-two-year-old woman, she cares surprisingly little what others think of her.  She's in Paris to party.  Sally Jay does what she wants.

This spirited gal could win a lot of hearts, but I can see people of the theatre especially loving Sally Jay to death.  She is a new and talented actress after all, so I feel like she could be a theatre major's best friend.  She's dramatic yet along for the ride.

The Dud Avocado is considered a coming-of-age story and what better example of finding oneself than a student abroad.  But this novel is light-years more lighthearted than The Bell Jar or The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It is also very different from every other coming-of-age story I've read because the conclusion leaves you wondering if Sally Jay did actually come of age.  The unsatisfying and semi-blunt ending suggests that she did not really learn her lesson.  In fact the story ends with Sally Jay heading to Japan, possibly to relive her crazy traveler's adventures.  The last sentence is Sally's declaration "It's zymotic," of the Japan trip. "Zymotic" could have be 50s slang or just Sally Jay slang, but literally it is a 1800s adjective for a very infectious disease.  Elaine Dundy could be referring to the return of Sally Jay's fever for travel, but she also might mean that she has been infected with the same quick trustfulness that got her into trouble in France.

What probably got this carefree and unassuming literary work a reprinting after half a century is its honest voice and Dalmatian spots of wisdom.  For example, this line in particular pops into my head at almost every social event I've been to since reading this book: "I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it."

(Hooray for marking The Dud Avocado off my list!  What's next? Frankenstein and A Beautiful Mess book club November selection, Lena Dunham's new essays.)

Review: Chocolates for Breakfast by Pamela Moore

I always hesitate to say that I loved a book or movie but I think I loved this book.  Just back in print after 50-some years, Chocolates for Breakfast is a sexier version of The Bell Jar and Pamela Moore parallels Sylvia Plath in that she is also a young woman in a rough marriage tortured by depressive bouts and eventual suicide.  Pamela Moore touches on many of the same coming-of-age themes of other young adult favorites like The Catcher in the Rye and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  In Plathian fashion, Moore killed herself at the age of twenty-six, eight years after Chocolates for Breakfast was first published in 1956.

The risque novel begins with fifteen-year-old Courtney Farrell holding an argument with her boarding school roommate Janet Parker, whose hobbies include lounging in the nude and getting kicked out of schools.  Janet is arguing that Courtney is too involved with one of the female English teachers who tutors the bright and bored Courtney in the evenings.  Janet tells her that the other girls are starting to think Courtney has a crush on Miss Rosen.  Courtney denies it but does seem to find her relationship with Miss Rosen very important, so much that she goes into a depression when Miss Rosen says Courtney is no longer allowed to visit her.  Courtney leaves Scaisbrooke for her actress mother's trendy apartment in Hollywood and then on to New York City where Courtney departs from her childhood quickly.

Reading the book feels as luxurious as the title sounds.  Cocktail parties, dates with older men, and sleeping in til early afternoon fill the novel.  Courtney's life as daughter of an actress mother and a rich father means decadence to the point of surrealism.  What struck me about Chocolates was Moore's voice.  She was seventeen when she wrote it, eighteen when it was published, so Moore was writing in the moment.  She wasn't looking back and remembering how she felt in her transition from child to woman; she was in that change.  She still wasn't sure how everything would end up for her, but she imagines for Courtney a hopeful and happy ending.  Some scenes could be criticized as cheesy and highly romanticized, but I had to smile in appreciation of the too-perfect scenes because that is exactly what a seventeen-year-old girl would write.

There are obviously a great many differences between Chocolates and Bell Jar.  Moore's novel is not told in the first person, and although we are offered a lot of clues about what Courtney and occasionally other characters are thinking, it is certainly not the "I just stepped into the mind of a crazy girl" experience that Plath gives a reader.  Whereas Plath is very raw in her descriptions of depression and suicidal thoughts, Moore romanticizes such things right alongside love affairs, champagne for breakfast, and fancy dinners.  With Esther in The Bell Jar the reader feels as though she knows what led Esther to want death.  With the characters in Chocolates for Breakfast, we are only looking in on their oversexed, scotch-drenched teenage lives and can only guess what they are truly feeling.

For reasons unexplained to myself, I loved this book.  Maybe it's because the review where I learned of it billed Chocolates as a lost classic, and I was eager to be a first to appreciate it in its rediscovery.  Maybe I just love the sound of chocolate.  Or maybe I have a fascination with coming-of-age stories. Whatever the reason, if you loved The Bell Jar you will love Moore too.