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After Claude (1973)

by Iris Owens(Favorite Author)

3.48 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1590173635 (ISBN13: 9781590173633)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

NYRB Classics

review 1: AFTER CLAUDE looked like just another confessional memoir of the 70s in the wake of the women's rights movement, but a mere page into it will reveal something entirely different and hilariously revelatory. Harriet, a twenty-something slacker a good couple of decades before those became a "thing," fights perpetually with her snooty French photographer boyfriend Claude as they live in New York City. Claude eventually becomes exhausted by the constant bickering (or can't deal with Harriet's earthy, vulgar genuineness and sense of humor), and dumps her for a vapid, statuesque airline stewardess. Harriet then goes from misadventure to folly in trying to win him back. Harriet is one of the most original voices I remember in literature for a good long while, no post-Victorian wal... morelflower or right-on feminist heroine, but a savagely hilarious, bitterly insecure woman whose self-sabotage is as gut-busting as it is gut-wrenching. Indeed, AFTER CLAUDE visits some decidedly dark corners, and the story is sometimes buoyed only by Harriet's merciless honesty and relentless one-liners, which entertain the reader even as they console Harriet for the world's cruelty. I could give examples, but that would be unfair to the surprises AFTER CLAUDE conceals. Once read, Harriet can never be forgotten.
review 2: How can anyone say this book is funny? or witty? It's about a sociopath who sees the world through delusions of grandeur. She gets kick out of France and her passport confiscated, finds a friend to welch off, drives her off the deep end, shacks up with whatever weirdo picks her up ( Claude), gets the boot from him for being weird, and then takes up with a cult recruiter who shows her how to masturbate. That's it. The whole book...a better title would be “My Life Before I Became a Cult Girl”. less

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