The Old Man and Me

By Elaine Dundy

In The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy revealed the life of the young expatriate in Paris in all its hilarious and heartbreaking drama. With The Old Man and Me, written when Dundy was living in England in the early 1960s, she tackles the American girl in London, a bit older but certainly no wiser.

Honey Flood (if that's her real name) arrives in London with only her quick wits and a scheme. To get what she wants, she'll have to seduce the city's brightest literary star, no matter how many would-be bohemians she has to charm, how many smoky jazz clubs she has to brave, or how many Lady Something-Somethings she has to humor. But with success within her reach, Honey finds that in making the Soho scene, she's made a big mistake.

Reviews

In this, in a way a sequel to her classic The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy's young and sexy American heroine, named (excellently) Honey Flood this time, parks herself in London, hellbent on sleeping and conniving and boozing her way to the top. She's angry, ambitious, vixenish, Holly Golightly crossed with Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim...I'm not sure who's claiming to have invented chick lit these days; but maybe Dundy should raise an arm, except that she's so murderously fierce.
— The Los Angeles Times

It's a terrific job—fierce, gamey, vixenish . . . as if it was bled not written. . . . Definitely demonic, exquisitely carved, deadly murderous comedy.
— Dawn Powell, The Washington Post

The surprises here are delicious... the houseparty, the hypocrisy suddenly twisted into benign tolerance, the fat, snobbish old man suddenly really Don Juan or Vronsky, the simple American girl relentlessly more witty than Nancy Mitford.... It's brilliant, weirdly original, and nobody gets away with nothing.
— Irwin Shaw

There isn't a dull line in it.
— P.G. Wodehouse

Through it all, Miss Dundy’s prose glitters like confetti against the gray English sky.
— Newsweek

As full of wry charm as The Dud Avocado.
— Doris Lessing

The Old Man and Me is a witty black comedy of manners as seen through the eyes of Dundy's finest creation, a hipster Daisy Miller, who shows us how each girl kills the thing she love-hates, or very nearly. A splendid, destructive work.
— Gore Vidal

Also see:

The Dud Avocado By Elaine Dundy Introduction by Terry Teachout Elaine Dundy's hilarious novel follows the misadventures of an American girl who impulsively quits college and heads off to conquer Paris in the 1950s. "A delightful few hours of sparkling reading entertainment. Summing up: Froth and frolic." —Newsweek

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