A book a day: Iris Owens: After Claude

Original title: After Claude

Year of publication: 1973

Translation: Regina López Muñoz

Valuation: Advisable

The importance of a first sentence (I left Claude, the French rat) and the first pages of a book to grab you of the balls and to set the tone for what we will find in the following pages, here are two examples:

The cab driver, with all the hatred in his heart, stepped on the accelerator and we hurtled down Broadway like we were carrying a bag of plasma to a decapitation.

(…) I am essentially a relaxed person who tries to see the funny side of this circus of monstrosities called life (…)

These are just two examples of the voice that will dominate a good part of a novel that has echoes, of course, of The conspiracy of fools and a Woody Allen on acid up to his glasses. Because Harriet is a caustic, uninhibited, hypochondriac, sharp and foul-mouthed narrator who tells us her version of the relationship and breakup with the French rat.

But be careful, although in the previous paragraph I speak of a novel, After Claude It has a lot of theatrical feel to it, both in terms of structure (times, settings, “scenography”, etc.) and the presence and importance of the dialogues.

Be that as it may, the first part of After Claude It has a frenetic pace. Sharp dialogues and black and absurd humour combine to create laughter and guffaws that, as the pages turn, will remain frozen as doubts arise about the narrator’s reliability, about possible altered perceptions of reality.

The second part, on the other hand, represents a significant change. Not because the pace drops, but because the humor is left aside and Harriet finds herself involved in a plot that brings to mind the nice Manson Family, including a psychedelic and cheeky medium, and which appears to have been written by William Vollmann of The royal family.

I won’t say that this second part is over since it forms a coherent whole, but the change in tone is so radical, especially with the first 75-100 pages, that if the book had ended at the end of the first part of the book I would have been left with a different taste in my mouth.