Review Archive for author's that start with ... Q

Reviewed on this page: Diary of a Married Call Girl (Tracy Quan),
                                        DIARY OF A MARRIED CALL GIRL
                                                          by Tracy Quan
                                                        ISBN 0007228627
                                                              318 pages
                                                      HARPER  PERENNIAL
                                                            June 1 2006
                                                                  $22.95
                                                  reviewed by Denise Pickles
                                                            June 3 2006
 

I have no way of knowing, Dear Reader, the level of your sexual knowledge or naïveté. Until I began reading DIARY OF A MARRIED CALL GIRL, I had no idea of the extent of my own ignorance. Oh well, presumably one doesn't come in contact with prostitutes every day of the week so one's education may be limited to what one learned in school in the reproduction lecture of physiology in combination with what one has picked up with various -- or just one -- partners. If you have only a small amount of knowledge on that sensitive topic, if you read Quan's DIARY, you will come away from it with  considerably  more.

Nancy  is a successful call girl. Her two best friends are also call girls but Allison has become an activist and semi-public figure to the apprehension of Nancy and Jasmine. Allie has fallen in love, the object of that love being a lecturer, Lucho, who is  encouraging Allie in her activism and promoting the notion of television appearances for her. Nancy is now married and the thought that Allie's appearances might lead to the disclosure of her own career appalls her.

When Nancy married, she did not relinquish her rent controlled apartment but instead,  sublet it to Charmaine, another working girl. They both use the apartment as their headquarters -- to coin a phrase -- but there is always the danger that Nancy's husband, Matt, might accidentally discover that Nancy shares a profession with Mrs. Warren. Then, too, there is the complication that Matt would like children.

Quan has impeccable credentials for writing a book or two about prostitutes. She is herself a call girl, albeit one who is now 'on sabbatical'. Quite apart from her description of the sex such a worker undertakes (complete with accounts of domination) she throws in social causes as well. There is enough serious material in the book to give one to think.

On concluding the book, perhaps the reader might, when reviewing Quan's knowledge, share the awe exhibited by Oliver Goldsmith's deserted village's rustic audience when contemplating the village schoolmaster :
"And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew."
although perhaps "head" could be seen as an inaccurate location..