{"product_id":"the-dud-avocado-vmc-designer-collection","title":"The Dud Avocado (VMC Designer Collection)","description":"'One of the funniest books I've ever read' - Gore Vidal\n\n*\n\nThe 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'.\n\nSally 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 programme that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realises 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?\n\n*\n\nA champagne cocktail ... Rich, invigorating, and deceptively simple to the taste ... One falls for Sally Jay Gorce from a great height from the first sentence - Observer\n\nAs delightful and delicate an examination of how it is to be twenty and in love and in Paris as I've ever read - Sunday Times\n\nI 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\n\nBooks included in the VMC 40th anniversary series include: Frost in May by Antonia White; The Collected Stories of Grace Paley; Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault; The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter; The Weather in the Streets by Rosamond Lehmann; Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith; The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston; Heartburn by Nora Ephron; Memento Mori by Muriel Spark; A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor; and Faces in the Water by Janet Frame","brand":"Little, Brown Book Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39668002979925,"sku":"9780349010373N","price":11.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2481\/5790\/products\/72ec5aa9-62c5-453f-9e7c-05422a861164.jpg?v=1644305158","url":"https:\/\/smeikalbooks.co.uk\/en-us\/products\/the-dud-avocado-vmc-designer-collection","provider":"smeikalbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}