The Dud Avocado (Virago Modern Classics)

by Elaine Dundy

I hope everyone reads this important and telling introduction to the author and her reasons for creating Sally Jay Gorce.

this is a book in which the modern girl’s perennial question – are love, sex and respect mutually exclusive, or should one hang around in the hope of bagging them all? – is never far from centre stage.

Remember, this is 1958 modern.

novel is the real deal: a comfort read, for sure, because we have all been young, and made mistakes, and woken up in the bed of the wrong man with panda eyes and only inappropriate shoes in which to travel home.

So true

Wild fuzzy hair...i wondered if she was referring to people of colour then confirmed in the next sentence...

What type am I or are you? When you travel, do you fit into any of Larry's types?

The Seagull quote

In his way

6 square metres Dungeon where 146 British soldiers were held captive one night and only 23 survived in 1756

Juxtapose these two sentences.

Hard boiled egg

It always made me sad to see that there were so many unmarried women in the world – sadder still to realize that they were largely unseen because there were so few public places they dared brave without a sense of strain.

To find someone to giggle with I place just below finding someone to flirt with and just above the ability to knit.

‘I used to think that was the smell of Russia, but now I know it is the smell of poverty the world over,’ guffawed Mrs Wire good-naturedly.

All the waiters wore striped fishermen’s jerseys,

It was one of those nights when the air is blood-temperature and it’s impossible to tell where you leave off and it begins.

Lesson 1: No matter what you do you’ve got to try to do it well.