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sophiaeck 's review for:
The Dud Avocado
by Elaine Dundy
the dud avocado begins with sally jay gorce walking down the streets of paris, when suddenly she sees a man she recognizes; despite the foreign parisian setting, the unlikelihood of seeing someone we know in a place we are not native to, this could be a mundane situation that could happen to any of us. this thought is truly prophetic of what we come to realize throughout this novel; sally jay gorce, when it comes down to it, is just like any of us. if we strip down these unique experiences of hers, the clubs, the european trips, the unlikely lovers, she is just a girl realizing that despite what she has previously believed, she does have time, and the world is wider than this small circle of people she’s surrounded by have led her to believe it is. these things she has been influenced into believing she wants, these people she is so sure she needs the approval of, they are just smokescreens and are blinding her of who she could really be. sally, like all of us, has these existential thoughts, self doubts, this resignation to how she thinks her life is destined to be; “i am mourning for my life.” but we are so young! a bird in a cage believes the cage is all it will ever know, but that doesn’t mean it has to be true. “i gave up wondering if anyone was ever going to understand me at all. if i was ever going to understand myself even.” throughout our lives, every once in awhile, we have to reintroduce ourselves to ourself, and reintroduce our selves to the world. we do not have to surrender ourselves to the person we have been until now, and we do not have to live the future we resigned ourselves into thinking is the only one we have. the dud avocado shows that if we fail to grow the seed we have in that moment, we can try again with a different seed, and it’s not a failure, it’s simply a new beginning. it’s like that one ask polly quote; “you are young and you are learning how to live.” and, despite this deep theme, this book is also especially clever, and you might even have a laugh. truly the best of both worlds