Rating: 
Summary: Desperately...frivolous and cynical
Review: Umpteenth product of the successful "chick lit", the semi autobiographical Diary by Tracy Quan shows some lacks much more weighing than others products of this current. The most freezing of those, it's the desperately frivolous and hypocritally comforting key chosen to relate a terrible story of juvenile prostitution and not only the supposed smart life of an élite prostitute (with its hyper-meticolous listing of Manhattan restaurants, shops, beauty centers, etc. that bores all Non-Manhattan readers!).
Nancy, the protagonist "dreams" since her childhood of becoming a prostitute and succeeds in its project of life: quite incoherently there are only vague hints for the fact that she's an Asian woman, while, at least since Maupassant's novels (for instance, The House of Madame Tellier, 1881) onward it's known that the prostitute's racial origins (as many other features) matter in the relationship with the customers.
Nancy's "denied adolescence" is portrayed as the intelligent adaptability to the ruthless laws of the (sex) market: an horrifying and frightening lesson, but not for this diligently learned by the protagonist and, worse still, dished out to the unlucky readers. At the top of her career, Nancy lives in a sort of desert of affective, familiar and emotional bonds, but she's uncritically integrated in the system (it's no accident that all the efforts of her colleagues to affirm their rights and to express their solidarity are presented in quite a ridicolous way) and has becomed a well-educated woman (unfortunately, the readers are not informed about where, how and when Nancy should have studied).
When the "true love" arrives the main worry of Nancy is plotting a cynical system of lies about per double life for her unaware fiancé: at any rate, she decides to continue her commercial activity.
All the narration leads to believe that the author accepts, nowadays, the positivist - and racist - XIX century's cliché of the "born prostitute"!
The "subtle erotism" of the book should reside in some tedious pages describing Nancy's copulations with her, usually very mature and well-off, customers. Sincerely, it's quite difficult to me to catch the "irony" in the story of woman who decide to sell herself at fourteen years old.
Phil
Rating: 
Summary: An Amazing Book
Review: Very endearing characters, with problems you actually care about understanding. It's the best of it's gengre I've ever read and I loved every page of it. The ending is to die for. It's one of those few, rare endings you get sometimes; that when you close the book, you're all warm and fuzzy inside, and can't help but feel happy. And throughly satisfied.
Rating: 
Summary: Prostitution as dream career?
Review: When I picked up this book I didn't realize that it was a thinly fictionalized autobiographical novel, but I'm not surprised... as in many autobiographical fictions, central character explorations are missing. The main one here is the author's assumption that the narrator, Nancy, is a normal girl from the suburbs who happened to have becoming a prostitute as her life's ambition. The book presents this matter-of-factly... first she wanted to be a librarian, then a centerfold, then a prostitute. The first two are normal enough, but the third...?Though it is fascinating to read about the details of Nancy's work-life (much of the work is faked, as it would be in exotic dance), the book assumes that being a call-girl is a cushy job. The normalcy of the "nice girls" who enter into it is taken for granted... consider Allison, who has a BA in Art History. Nancy views her leaving a job as a shop assistant to become a call girl as a step up, and Allison seems to view it the same way. Who ARE these people? The other thing the book never recovers from is the glossed-over revelation that Nancy ran away at age 14. So apparently she's a high-school drop out who's been a hooker for over ten years... successfully faking out her boyfriend that she's a copy editor, successfully faking out her family. Is everyone in her universe that stupid? So for most readers-- likely to be college-educated magazine-reading Sex-and-the-City watching single women-- the central character is both recognizable (where she shops, details of her day) and completely alien.I (a college-educated etc. etc.) found it impossible to relate to-- or worse, even believe in-- Nancy's decision over whether to keep hooking or marry her unbelievably sweet and loyal boyfriend. How did she meet Matt? What does he see in her? At best, Nancy is a woman whose self-esteem depends entirely on admiration from men, which she gets via prostitution (which doesn't always even include the sex act). She's functional, but who is she? Even she doesn't really know, she leads so many different lives. And since the main energy of her life goes into herself-- we never see her expressing a selfless emotion for anyone-- it's hard to view her as anything but a shallow narcissist, let alone pity her. The blurbs on the book present it as funny, but really it's sad, though it thinks it's smart. Two stars for sheer fascination.
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