September 27–October 4, 2001

book quicks|fiction

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl

By Tracy Quan
Crown, 271 pp., $22

Finally, a smart, juicy novel about call girls, their personal relationships and the politics of turning tricks. Developed from Tracy Quan’s excellent Salon.com columns, this novel (her first) is excellent.

High-class New York call girl Nancy Chan keeps an articulate diary (at the suggestion of her therapist) of her day-to-day activities, which include juggling dates with her fiancé as they hunt for a new apartment and maintaining her weekly quota of a thousand or so a week. The intricacies of her work go far beyond hiding it from her fiancé and his family, though Nancy’s projection of some of her cheesier clients onto her intended makes for some tragically funny moments. Two of her close friends (bridesmaids, too) are involved in a sex workers’ unionization effort, which leads to a public radio address, which leads to the almost-comic blackmailing of a hooker, which ultimately leads to Nancy’s future sister-in-law calling her business line asking her to participate in an investigation of one of her tonier clients. Too much action too close to home makes for a taut, fast-paced, fascinating read.

As in that certain HBO show about sex, New York City plays a part in Quan’s novel. Since the real estate game is all about location, a sleepy two-bedroom on Astor Place might seem ideal for Nancy and her fiancé — if it hadn’t once been a brothel where Nancy worked. At the sex workers’ meetings, street hookers from Queens clash with uptown call girls, who are at once stricken with guilt and confused at how to act toward someone whose terrain is so utterly foreign to them.

Nancy manages to keep her secret, until her two worlds converge in ways that prove everyone has something to hide, and something to lose. Nancy chooses to keep what she spent a long time making her own, which is to say, her independence.

—Alex Richmond