emily1602 's review for:

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

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Afterward and bits of the last few pages made me kind of love the author. This book was written in the 1950s, and the narrator sounded like a grandmother even when she was talking about sleeping around and doing drugs. The first three-quarters of this follow the narrator, a young American in Paris,  as she goes on vacation, has drama with ex-boyfriends, tries to get a job in the movies, and loses her passport. In the last quarter, she finds out the perfectly-imperfect romantic hero she has been following around is running a prostitution ring, stole her passport, and is trying to get her arrested by the FBI. There is a very quick character arc where the narrator loses her faith in humanity and becomes cynical, then regains both her faith and her own brand of optimism. Sometimes I liked the narrator, sometimes she was annoying.