Claudia lives for the winter, the din of darkening pubs, for torch songs, for Crilly. Fleeing the glitter of her native California, she finds her own brand of hedonism in the underworld of Camden Town. Her world is not solely the drugs and characters that patrol it; it is the deep sensuality of her escape, oblivion. Together with her lover, Claudia explores the outer regions of such oblivion, guiding her between strange homes and pubs, the back streets of London and Dublin and, eventually, home again, where she is forced to come to terms with the very self she is evading.