After Claude

Harriet has decided she is done with Claude, whom she privately calls a French rat, though the decision is complicated by the fact that Claude has already told her to pack up and leave his Greenwich Village flat. She had planned to stay put and take her revenge, but his eviction spoils that plan. Once she is out on the street, she refuses to simply carry on. Her friends offer comfort and counsel, and Harriet bristles at every word, because she can see straight through the reassuring clichés they live by. Harriet is a sharp, uninhibited voice who skewers the gap between how women's lives are supposed to look and how they actually feel. Later the story turns toward New York's Chelsea Hotel, where Harriet's situation takes an unexpected direction.