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Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel (Nancy Chan Novels)
 
 
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Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel (Nancy Chan Novels) [Hardcover]

Tracy Quan (Author)
3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)


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Book Description

Nancy Chan Novels August 14, 2001
This is the diary of Nancy Chan, turn-of-the-millennium call girl, who lives and works on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Although she’s in her thirties, she’s at the top of her career–a better twenty-five-year-old today than when she was twenty-five. Most of her regulars don’t realize how long she’s been working. Her new fiancé, Matt, an up-and-coming M.B.A. on Wall Street, does know her age and how long she’s been working but not what she does for a living. And at least for the time being, Nancy wants to keep it that way.

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 complicated call girl friends who, shall we say, make her life more interesting than it really needs to be–not to mention an unwitting fiancé who has started to apartment hunt and arrange a wedding–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 fiancé and his family, Nancy demonstrates, in her inimitable fashion, that if you know the dance, you can keep those two worlds from colliding. At least for a while.

Based on the highly successful Salon.com column “Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl,” this wonderfully intelligent, sexually frank, rollicking novel gives us fresh insight into the machinations and politics of being an expensive call girl in the modern world. Tracy Quan pulls no punches, gives no apologies, and has written one of the best and most honest books yet on the topic.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Quan, who put her career as an elite Manhattan prostitute on hold to become a writer, is the author of a popular salon.com column chronicling the adventures of fictional call girl Nancy Chan. Those biweekly installments grew into this reality-based novel. Nancy's central dilemma, hashed out in her diary and with her shrink, Dr. Wendy, is whether to give up hooking when she becomes engaged to her sweet Wall Street-whiz boyfriend, Matt. Her two best friends (and colleagues), Allison and Jasmine, offer little support on this front. Jasmine is firmly against marriage, and Allison, who is 30 going on 19, is too obsessed with her own problems (including her foray into the sex workers' activist movement) to be of any help. The descriptions of Nancy's "dates" read like soft porn, but Quan does pose some interesting questions about gender and sexuality and a certain brand of "sex-positive" feminism (represented by writers like Camille Paglia and Susie Bright). But the main point here is to be erotic and playful. Quan manages both in a book that makes perfect beach reading. Beth Warrell
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (August 14, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0609607243
  • ISBN-13: 978-0609607244
  • Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,271,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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.

 

Customer Reviews

70 Reviews
5 star:
 (21)
4 star:
 (11)
3 star:
 (11)
2 star:
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1 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.2 out of 5 stars (70 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars funny and touching, August 22, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel (Nancy Chan Novels) (Hardcover)
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.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars the characters came alive for me, October 17, 2001
This review is from: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel (Nancy Chan Novels) (Hardcover)
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!

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Smart & Sassy - Chan is a new voice about an old profession, August 25, 2001
By 
janeyb "janeyb" (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel (Nancy Chan Novels) (Hardcover)
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.
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Today I had the most embarrassing experience-with one of my regulars. Read the first page
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New York, Professor Andrews, Carnegie Hill, East Side, Mary Magdalene, New Age, Carl Schurz Park, Cozy Von Booty, Hunts Point, Mona Lisa Smile, Suzy Rollins, Tom Winters, Town Car, Wall Street, Central Park, Lisa Marquis, Louis Vuitton, West Side, Barry Horowitz, Cumberland Hotel, Franklin Street, Garment Center, Legal Aid, Vera Wang
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