Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl is a wonderfully intelligent, sexually frank, rollicking novel that introduces us to Nancy Chan, a turn-of-the-millennium call girl who lives and works on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Nancy is full of contradictory desires; she frequently has to choose between making love and making money. On good days, she gets to do both. Surrounded by devoted, wealthy, and powerful johns, some of whom want more than just sex, and caught between two all-consuming call girl friends who complicate her life, Nancy navigates the tricky currents of the world’s oldest profession. With one foot in the bedrooms of her rich and demanding clients and one in the straight world of her unwitting fiancé, who has started to apartment-hunt and arrange a wedding, Nancy keeps her two worlds from colliding in her inimitable style.
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In timely step with stories glorifying characters created for video games, Quan's semi-autobiographical novel takes readers by the hand (and various other appendages) at the tail end of call girl Nancy Chan's career. Chan (whom Quan created for her Salon online column) is a "successful" (read: expensive) prostitute who spends more time listing her favorite clothes, restaurants and cosmetic tips than even Bret Easton Ellis did in American Psycho. In between $400-per-hour quickies at exclusive hotels, Nancy and her happy hooker pals Jasmine and Allison attend sex-industry activist meetings and debate the sinister reappearance of Jack, a former john who now appears to be obsessed with Allison. Nancy whines about this and her deepening relationship with her commitment-minded boyfriend to her shrink, also revealing how she plunged into prostitution as a teen. The novel has neither a substantial plot (Nancy dithering over whether to marry her dream boyfriend and get out of the life) nor sex appeal: Nancy's descriptions of her sensual encounters, be they professional or personal, are about as erotic as a stereo instruction manual ("always do a few extra Kegels afterwards"). Fans of Quan's online column may enjoy the continuation of Nancy's X-rated soap opera, but first-time readers may be put off by her snobbishness.
Tracy Quan is the bestselling author of the Nancy Chan call-girl trilogy, which began as a serial novel on Salon.com. During childhood, she harbored thoughts of becoming a novelist, but her first meaningful career (which now provides the inspiration for her fiction) was not in publishing...
A frequent contributor to The Daily Beast, The Guardian website and The Drawbridge, she writes about pop culture, sex and politics from a unique perspective. Michelle Obama, Mary Magdalene and Winnie-the-Pooh have been recent subjects, along with scandal prone lads such as Tiger Woods and Eliot Spitzer. She has also written for the New York Times, Financial Times, South China Morning Post and numerous other publications.
Tracy, who can't get enough medieval history, is a recovering Enid Blyton addict, prefers Twitter to Facebook and lives in Manhattan, the setting of her first two novels.
This is a delight: brisk, full of witty and subtle human observation, spicy in its frank and clear-eyed evocation of the high-end hooker's life. The prevailing tone is madcap comedy in alternation with a drier humor, but the author makes surprisingly moving detours into reminiscence and reflection; nobody will have trouble empathizing with the splendidly confused heroine. Tip: for fullest appreciation, log on to Salon.com and read the 50 or so episodes of Nancy Chan's life that lead up to the starting point of the novel.
Nancy Chan lunches with her friends. She shops. She visits her shrink. She works out. She worries about her fiance. She frets about money. She can't find a cab in the rain. She dreads going before a co-op board. She lives an utterly Manhattan existence except for the fact that she's a call girl. Tracy Quan has created a humorous novel that discusses the life and times of a modern call-girl in a matter-of-fact way. She talks about sex with clients in the same way she discusses working out. A kegel here, an ab crunch there. They're both just simple parts of her life. Nancy's clients are an interesting and accomplished and older bunch, and her fondness for them is apparent. They add depth and color to the novel. These are not "Johns" in the typical sense. As Nancy travels around town, she encounters a cast of characters we have not seen anywhere else. A call-girl who graduated from being a drug dealer. A call-girl who graduated from the Ivy League. Sex-worker activists. Sex-worker groupies. A fiance whose sister works for the District Attorney. A fiance who works on Wall Street. Nancy doesn't just play her life for laughs. We learn about her childhood in Canada and her youth in London, where she turned tricks in hotel bars. There were scary moments on the job, so she doesn't glorify her profession. But she demonstrates courage and perseveres, until we find her at the top of her game, able to efficiently address a client's needs without mussing her hair or making her late for dinner with the in-laws to be.
Quan's character-driven story of a pricey call girl stewing over both important life decisions and day-to-day trivia was fascinating to me because she and I have both worked in the same profession but have had such very different experiences. Where my work has mainly been "small town," Quan has worked as an upscale, uptown, chic and elite call girl. Quan's writing has been eye-opening for me because she shows another way of approaching the work -- another life altogether.
But this isn't just a book about escorting and escorts and it's appeal is much broader than self-referential reading for other sex workers. This is a book about life, choices, fears and successes that everyone has in one form or another. More than describing the life of a call girl, Quan is describing the life of a Manhattanite. Stand aside, Seinfeld; step back, Sex and the City -- Nancy Chan owns New York!
The characters are absolutely fascinating; I devoured this book. I've got my fingers crossed for a sequel -- I want more!
