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3.73 AVERAGE
3.73 AVERAGE
funny
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a reread; the first time I read it I was 14, and holy hell did Sally Jay Gorce inform my personality much more than I realized. I honestly thought I had only co-opted Max's style of smoking (holding a cigarette in between your third and fourth fingers), but I apparently walked away with practically a whole outlook on life. Or sex, anyway.
The gay bar scene is a bit ... dated, shall I (a "queer" myself) say. Not as bad as it could be for 1958, I guess, but preeeeetty bad.
Outside of that and the egregious deus ex machina, it's a fun, madcap adventure. Couple great lines. A mood that's difficult to evoke nowadays. A slew of interesting, often amusing characters who are not interchangeable.
"The world is wide, wide, wide, and I am young, young, young, and we're all going to live forever!"
The gay bar scene is a bit ... dated, shall I (a "queer" myself) say. Not as bad as it could be for 1958, I guess, but preeeeetty bad.
Outside of that and the egregious deus ex machina, it's a fun, madcap adventure. Couple great lines. A mood that's difficult to evoke nowadays. A slew of interesting, often amusing characters who are not interchangeable.
"The world is wide, wide, wide, and I am young, young, young, and we're all going to live forever!"
adventurous
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Sally Jay is someone who tells it like it is. She’s very honest and easy for me to envision as a person. It’s possible that I know a lot of women who are open like her. She always speaks her mind and seems unafraid to offend anyone. In most cases, I liked that about her character. Even though in some ways she seems like an independent woman, she is also naïve about many things, at least in the beginning of the novel.
This novel isn’t so much a story with a plot as much of an experience. It feels like you are a voyeur in someone else’s life for a brief time when you read this novel. During her few months in France, Sally Jay learns so much about the world. She is given an allowance from her eccentric, rich Uncle Rodger, who funds her two year trip to Europe from America. Sally Jay’s story is one of the young American woman abroad, on her own. Though her story is set in the 1950s, some of the elements of travel are similar to today (though the slew of marriage proposals from men is likely more indictive of the 50s).
Sally Jay defends herself from several bad proposals from a variety of men. First there’s Theodore, the older man who is trying to divorce his wife. He tries to make Sally Jay his rebound and then proposes to marry her, after she expresses her disinterest. He tries to entrap her several times and fails. In order to dissuade Theodore, she tries to gain her friend Larry’s attention (she has a crush on Larry and knows him from their college days in America) but she fails since he is busy trying to chase women with money and status. So instead of getting with Sally Jay, Larry has an unsuccessful affair with a middle-aged countess.
After managing to escape from Theodore, with no help from Larry, Sally Jay falls for an artist named Jim. He’s a painter and also from America like both Sally Jay and Larry are (Theodore and the Countess were also French). Jim is young, only a few years older than Sally Jay, who is twenty-one. Despite being a artist, Sally Jay finds out that Jim is pretty normal and boring compared to the other people she’s been hanging out with in France. He doesn’t really party at all. In fact, he wants to marry her too, just like Theodore did. She also rejects him, deciding that she can’t see herself yet as a married woman.
All while this is going on, Sally Jay works for Larry as an actress since she is trying to get a career in acting. Larry wants to be a director or producer, he runs the productions that Sally Jay is in. She escapes with Larry, his new girlfriend, and Bax, a guy who admires Sally Jay from her theatre work. Bax is this lumberjack guy who really likes Sally Jay even though she doesn’t like him. She is still interested in Larry so she agrees to accompany him as a favor. They get a job working as extras on a movie, except Bax, whose rugged good looks earn him a leading role even though he doesn’t care about acting (ironically).
I rated this book 4.5 stars! This was one of my highest rated classics for 2018’s challenge, which I will list after I’m done posting all the related reviews. I’m a little behind, I know. There are several rather disturbing and scary twists in this story which show the hazards of being a young woman traveling alone, which seems to ring true in any age, unfortunately. I won’t spoil them in case you want to read this book, which I suggest. If you want to travel to 1950’s Paris with a young American girl’s viewpoint, then this is the novel for you. Sally Jay is a character with a strong, unforgettable voice, which is probably one of the main reasons that this book has withstood time as a classic.
This novel isn’t so much a story with a plot as much of an experience. It feels like you are a voyeur in someone else’s life for a brief time when you read this novel. During her few months in France, Sally Jay learns so much about the world. She is given an allowance from her eccentric, rich Uncle Rodger, who funds her two year trip to Europe from America. Sally Jay’s story is one of the young American woman abroad, on her own. Though her story is set in the 1950s, some of the elements of travel are similar to today (though the slew of marriage proposals from men is likely more indictive of the 50s).
Sally Jay defends herself from several bad proposals from a variety of men. First there’s Theodore, the older man who is trying to divorce his wife. He tries to make Sally Jay his rebound and then proposes to marry her, after she expresses her disinterest. He tries to entrap her several times and fails. In order to dissuade Theodore, she tries to gain her friend Larry’s attention (she has a crush on Larry and knows him from their college days in America) but she fails since he is busy trying to chase women with money and status. So instead of getting with Sally Jay, Larry has an unsuccessful affair with a middle-aged countess.
After managing to escape from Theodore, with no help from Larry, Sally Jay falls for an artist named Jim. He’s a painter and also from America like both Sally Jay and Larry are (Theodore and the Countess were also French). Jim is young, only a few years older than Sally Jay, who is twenty-one. Despite being a artist, Sally Jay finds out that Jim is pretty normal and boring compared to the other people she’s been hanging out with in France. He doesn’t really party at all. In fact, he wants to marry her too, just like Theodore did. She also rejects him, deciding that she can’t see herself yet as a married woman.
All while this is going on, Sally Jay works for Larry as an actress since she is trying to get a career in acting. Larry wants to be a director or producer, he runs the productions that Sally Jay is in. She escapes with Larry, his new girlfriend, and Bax, a guy who admires Sally Jay from her theatre work. Bax is this lumberjack guy who really likes Sally Jay even though she doesn’t like him. She is still interested in Larry so she agrees to accompany him as a favor. They get a job working as extras on a movie, except Bax, whose rugged good looks earn him a leading role even though he doesn’t care about acting (ironically).
I rated this book 4.5 stars! This was one of my highest rated classics for 2018’s challenge, which I will list after I’m done posting all the related reviews. I’m a little behind, I know. There are several rather disturbing and scary twists in this story which show the hazards of being a young woman traveling alone, which seems to ring true in any age, unfortunately. I won’t spoil them in case you want to read this book, which I suggest. If you want to travel to 1950’s Paris with a young American girl’s viewpoint, then this is the novel for you. Sally Jay is a character with a strong, unforgettable voice, which is probably one of the main reasons that this book has withstood time as a classic.
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Reread Review 2020: Like chicken soup for the soul, I love this book.
This book is full of the carefree exuberance of a youthful girl abroad in 1950's Paris. Gorce's character wasn't entirely sympathetic, but I still enjoyed her perspective on life and her constant attempt to "really live." This comedic, quirky novel was the perfect afternoon getaway.
This book is full of the carefree exuberance of a youthful girl abroad in 1950's Paris. Gorce's character wasn't entirely sympathetic, but I still enjoyed her perspective on life and her constant attempt to "really live." This comedic, quirky novel was the perfect afternoon getaway.
It’s Paris in the 1950s, and Sally Jay Gorce is an American therein, enjoying her time abroad on a sojourn funded by a generous uncle. She thinks she’s rather more sophisticated than she is, having lost her virginity to a married diplomat and having been bumping around enjoying late nights, parties, and liquor. Entertaining and witty, but beneath the levity, there’s some nastiness and things that scurry away from the light, whether it’s the date who slaps her and calls her a little slut early on or other revelations later in the book. Wit and chin up,sure, but jaunty adventures with a dark side. The ending was a bit of 50s wish fulfillment. 3.5.
Once upon a time, I was told that what my writing had was voice, that it came naturally and effortlessly and was distinctly mine. Using this gift of my voice, I was meant to go out in the world and say something. Well, so far, that’s yet to happen, but it came as no surprise while reading the afterward of a novel I’d loved madly to see a quote from Gore Vidal to the writer, “You’ve got the one thing a writer needs: You’ve got your own voice. Now go.” The novel was bewitching and loveable and exciting, and what made it all of these things was the voice of its heroine, the singular Sally Jay Gorce. What a girl! What a voice! I felt reading it like there was nearly nothing like Sally Jay in the annals of literature, but at the same time, I felt like she was this girl I’d always longed to be or at least to know. And her thoughts, her sentences, there were dozens of them that left me exclaiming in the margins, “Yes!” or, “Nice!” There were dozens more that left me wondering if I would ever write a sentence half so good.
The Dud Avocado is a book I discovered thanks to an NPR bit about books you must read. I didn’t know the recommender, Rosecrans Baldwin, but I liked his ridiculous name and the name of his book, but most of all, I liked his description of Sally Jay and the line he quoted from the novel about her being “hellbent for living.” When I think about me in my best moments, when I’m not too down or too depressed, “hellbent for living” is more than apt. In fact, on more than one occasion, this tendency has found me all alone because not so many others are anxious to embrace hell or high water as I am. I cannot count the number of men I’ve scared off with this tendency or else dismissed for their lack of it, so meeting Sally Jay felt like meeting a sister. Sure, I’d like to think I have more sense than she has, though a few of my own stories might call that assertion into question, but her embrace of it all and her desire to go her own way, a desire she sometimes struggles against because of all the trouble it lands her in, these were familiar to me.
So was her voice. It’s the kind of voice I’ve heard in my head narrating my own stories—smart and smart-alecky, witty and funny, so wise and so foolish, so right and yet so completely wrong. To be clear, I’m not saying I’m any of those things except maybe foolish and completely wrong, but the voice in my head is. It’s all of them at once, just like Sally Jay. The inside of my head, and the voice that occupies it, is a mess, a complete disaster, and yet I somehow muddle through. I have my adventures and misadventures and utter lack of adventures, and I and this voice get though; we come out the other side of whatever it is with stories. Sure, thus far, there’ve been no pimps, no passport scandals, no nights in jail. Utterly lacking are love affairs with married and mistressed Italian diplomats or would-be Hollywood stars. I’ve never worn an evening gown before noon in Paris because all my laundry is dirty, though I do have Sally Jay's knack for not wearing the right clothes. Sally Jay’s life is not mine; but honestly, it isn’t anyone’s no matter how based in the author’s life it may or may not be. Her life is a bit too fairy tale, after all, but oh, what a luscious fairy tale it is!
The Dud Avocado is a book I discovered thanks to an NPR bit about books you must read. I didn’t know the recommender, Rosecrans Baldwin, but I liked his ridiculous name and the name of his book, but most of all, I liked his description of Sally Jay and the line he quoted from the novel about her being “hellbent for living.” When I think about me in my best moments, when I’m not too down or too depressed, “hellbent for living” is more than apt. In fact, on more than one occasion, this tendency has found me all alone because not so many others are anxious to embrace hell or high water as I am. I cannot count the number of men I’ve scared off with this tendency or else dismissed for their lack of it, so meeting Sally Jay felt like meeting a sister. Sure, I’d like to think I have more sense than she has, though a few of my own stories might call that assertion into question, but her embrace of it all and her desire to go her own way, a desire she sometimes struggles against because of all the trouble it lands her in, these were familiar to me.
So was her voice. It’s the kind of voice I’ve heard in my head narrating my own stories—smart and smart-alecky, witty and funny, so wise and so foolish, so right and yet so completely wrong. To be clear, I’m not saying I’m any of those things except maybe foolish and completely wrong, but the voice in my head is. It’s all of them at once, just like Sally Jay. The inside of my head, and the voice that occupies it, is a mess, a complete disaster, and yet I somehow muddle through. I have my adventures and misadventures and utter lack of adventures, and I and this voice get though; we come out the other side of whatever it is with stories. Sure, thus far, there’ve been no pimps, no passport scandals, no nights in jail. Utterly lacking are love affairs with married and mistressed Italian diplomats or would-be Hollywood stars. I’ve never worn an evening gown before noon in Paris because all my laundry is dirty, though I do have Sally Jay's knack for not wearing the right clothes. Sally Jay’s life is not mine; but honestly, it isn’t anyone’s no matter how based in the author’s life it may or may not be. Her life is a bit too fairy tale, after all, but oh, what a luscious fairy tale it is!