The Avocado Fool — Philip Norman

THE AVOCADO FOOL is a harrowingly comic tale of one man's mid-life crisis, set against the backdrop of London and New York in the early 1980s. Mal Pritchard is a publicist for Badge Records, doing little to justify his huge salary and expense account beyond entertaining trade journalists at expensive restaurants. Living with his doting girlfriend, dreamily obsessed with his literary idol F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mal seems to be heading for matrimony. That is until he falls for a new work colleague which throws everything into chaos. The strain of their office affair and his insecurity over the beautiful Alex's other lovers - real and imagined - lead Mal to suggest they run away to New York, which he's often visited on his lavish expense account. He soon finds that it's a very different place if you're paying your own way, especially downtown in not-yet-fashionable TriBeCa. Trying to write a film-script in an 'artist's loft' without air-conditioning during the city's worst heatwave for decades, Mal soon finds his insecurities over Alex soaring off the chart. Mal escapes the cockroad-ridden Manhatten for leafy Long Island and there finds a cure for his amorous obsession in an unexpected form - an Old English sheepdog named Chequers. Exploring emotions from a male perspective and by turns hilarious and touching, THE AVOCADO FOOL appeals to anyone who has loved 'not wisely but too well'.