Customer Reviews

Rent Girl

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Michelle Tea never seems tired of writing about her life. If she keeps up to her to usual standards, there's no reason why the rest of us would ever tire of reading about it either. RENT GIRL focuses on Tea's history in the sex trade, a witty graphic novel/memoir that is not only humorous and inspiring but beautifully illustrated.

Tea is a fantastic writer who does not shy away from revealing the "mechanics" of her exploits to an encounter with a bad case of crabs. There is no "woe is me" monologues or angry tirades against an unforgiving society. She describes the absurdity of her clients, from a self-proclained warlock to cocaine-addicted business men. Her writing masterfully remains passively unapologetic and full of the witty prose that Tea is known for. The art work is spectacular. Laurenn McCubbin's eye for detail captures near-perfect facial expressions and the raw emotion of Tea's work. I hope the two will collaborate again.

RENT GIRL is simply amazing. Michelle Tea's personal accounts are simple yet complicated with jaded opinions and poetic verses about faked sex acts and looking for stability in a chaotic world. This won't disappoint.

This graphic novel is less about a working-class lesbian's foray into the sex industry and more about the liberation of life experience. Tea reinforces the fact that she's the real deal: Her prose is colloquial and well-crafted--typos notwithstanding. And McCubbin's illustrations? Each is a little piece of perfection: shimmering, warm, and bright.

The book is written differently than any other book I have read so that caught me off guard at first. I learned to enjoy the way Michelle Tea wrote and was fasinated by her life. My only complaint is that it ended way too soon. I am going to purchase more of her work. The artwork is wonderful.

As a fan of all of Michelle Tea's works, this one keeps track with her amazing writing style. It's not normal, but it's not unbearably weird. This book is hard to put down, and when you do put it down, you will think about it.

It goes in hard into how exactly her life was, real, gritty, and not glossed over. She doesn't just focus on the good times, she gets into the raw of it. The drawings that accompany are amazing as well.

This will go down as one of my favorite books.

I enjoyed the writing a great deal and was impressed that the "graphic" aspects of the novel did not override the plot and characters in the actual story. However, I was disappointed in the story as a whole. I found Tea's work as a sex worker extremely interesting, but as a narrator I found her to be whiny and often annoying. Though she courageously displayed her weaknesses as well as her strengths, I still could not help but want more from the characters whether it was development, background information, or some resolution. Being that it is a memoir, everything can't always be pleasantly resolved. However, every character eventually disappear without any acknowledgment that they had previously existed.

The story begins with great strength and interest as Tea describes her life as a lesbian sex worker in Boston. As her travels bring her to Provincetown and Tucson, the reader can feel that Tea is running out of steam (and so is her story). Her girlfriend, for the majority of the piece, is a self-centered and one-dimensional woman who introduces Tea to the world of prostitution. Along the way, the two meet up and live with various other sex workers and drug addicts. While the ride is rocky and the writing is smooth, the characters are emotionally limited and appear as caricatures.

At first the art and stream-of-thought-style writing is a little hard to stomach. After around the second chapter, however, I really started to get used to the style and actually interested in the book. It's very gritty and blunt. However, at the same time it really puts you THERE. I have friends that are somewhat like the girls in the book, so it hit very close to home for me. I would definitely recommend this book.

Lyrical, insightful, honest, and rich with detail, Rent Girl provides an unvarnished, up-close look at sex work and hustling without ever being prurient or preachy. The story is fascinating, the prose is poetic, and the art is sensational. Fans of Eileen Myles and Phoebe Gloeckner will love this book. Just amazing.

Michelle Tea tells the first-person story of a young woman, just twenty-one, drifting through the early 90s. There's no real plot, any more than any other life has, just a series of events: the hooker room-mate who starts her in prostitution, the girlfriends (good, bad, and just strange), the johns, and the occasional need to move. When others move, it signals a new stage of life. When Michelle moves, it sounds more like repotting a plant, replacing depleted soil with the same amount of different dirt. The story doesn't beg for sympathy, howl in outrage, or gloat in justification. Instead, it tonelessly describes sex work of various kinds, unsuccessful attempts at dealing drugs, and a non-verbal need for someone to stand by her.

The story seems equally bleak and bold in its different parts, so McCubbin's bleak, bold artwork complements it perfectly. The harsh style, in solid tones of black and read, matches the narrator's hard-edge life. For me, the graphics really made the book - if this had appeared as a regular novel, it would not have held me. Instead, I find it a dark but clear look at the aimless side of life.

-- wiredweird

This is one of those books that becomes a lyric caught in your head. Every word just felt a little too relevant... and definitely the words of someone who's been there, not that I would know, officer. This is not one to be missed. I picked up every one of Tea's books after this one, but this will always be my favorite.

Ultimately, this book leaves me cold. The premise sounds good, a lesbian hooker's kiss and tell plus pictures but after a promising beginning, describing an invite-only party her madame throws the story falters. The main reason for this is that the narrator appears to have only one attitude towards other people: sneering contempt. This doesn't say much about these other people but it says a lot about the narrator. And thus one loses interest in her rapidly.

Add atrocious (i.e. non-existent) editing, numerous spelling errors and the constant substitution of `than' with `then' and the picture that emerges is that of an author who appears to think that a memoir is worth reading simply because the author happens to be a part of the queer community. I am sorry, but it is not. Being self-absorbed and condescending doesn't make you a good writer, queer or not. I'd much rather read Dorothy Allison or Patrick Califia for that matter.

A shame, really, because the idea does sound good and the illustrations by Laurenn McGubbin are quite nice.