The dud avocado (Elaine Dundy)

Off beat in Paris

Journeying with our twenty-one year old heroine around 1950’s France proves to be far closer to the classic beat novels than I’d expected. Imagine On the Road but with more depth of character and fewer miles per page.

Sally Jay loves a good quarrel. And they’re great fun to read: each side creatively sparring with the other, the upper hand shifting and the reader enjoying the competition rather than spurring on a particular side.

As with the beat novels, I found it hard to predict what was going to happen next. It captured the randomness of life, tugging to reader towards just going with it, because something interesting is so often waiting around the next corner.

It helps that Sally Jay is so likeable. Aware of her flaws and strengths while being utterly unapologetic about either. She notices a great deal: however much it’s for the readers benefit, it doesn’t feel forced.

The setting is very much of it’s time. Our heroine is compelled to go along with things to keep everyone happy, being told to “be good”. Thankfully she has plenty of fight in her.

And what would Sally Jay make of the reader? Says she: “Read! I don’t want to read, it’s a substitute for living!”