The Old Man and Me [Paperback]

A sly, funny novel about an American girl trying to make it in 1960s London–and discovering that she's in over head. 

InThe Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy revealed the life of the young expatriate in Paris in all its hilarious and heartbreaking drama. WithThe 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.

In this, in a way a sequel to her classicThe 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. --Los Angeles Times

“Here was no one else quite like her. She introduced a whole style, the freed American girl landing on old Europe, starting in Paris and moving on to London. She collected a lot of very interesting friends...She had a lot of reality that was far more interesting than fiction.” –Gore Vidal

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 LesslĂ*