Publishers Weekly
05/13/2024
Essayist Shane follows Prostitute Laundry with more stimulating dispatches from the front lines of the sex industry. Dividing the collection into seven sections, Shane recounts her sexual awakening, subsequent introduction to sex work, and relationship with Roger, a longtime client who died of a brain tumor at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. She deliberately scrambles the timelines, juxtaposing anecdotes about coming-of-age at the center of an all-male friend group with accounts of jobs that mirrored the lessons she learned about male desire from those adolescent experiences. Flanking the more narrative passages are ruminations on the ironies of client/escort relationships, Freudian breakdowns of Shane’s relationship with her father (“When I was sixteen, my father demanded two pieces of information from me: my status as a virgin and my status as a lesbian”), and sharp examinations of the prostitute’s symbolic power as opposed to that of the “civilian woman.” Refreshingly, Shane depicts the good of sex work (its liberatory potential, for example) as thoroughly as the bad (its occasional reinforcement of patriarchal structures). This slim volume packs a punch. Agent: Samantha Shea, Georges Borchardt. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
One of the New York Times and New York Magazine/ Vulture's Most Anticipated Books of 2024
“A rigorous and compulsively readable memoir about her career as a sex worker and the possibilities of romantic love between men and women. Shane excavates her relationships with her father and the boys she grew up with, measuring the harm of inherited lessons about sex and the value of girls’ hotness against the power and freedom sex work later afforded her. This personal and professional investigation resonates and entices.” –New York Magazine
"Shane’s unsparing honesty illuminates what it means for her to seek love, intimacy and relationships with these men under a cloud of misogyny."—New York Times Book Review
"In compulsively readable, confessional prose, Shane probes her own experiences with desire, being desired, and the desire to be desired. She exposes the ways in which capitalism and patriarchy infect every union."—Bustle
“Astute in her social critiques, the author demonstrates her intuitive understanding of how people can build more fulfilling relationships with one another.... It's funny, authentic, and unequivocally honest. A graceful and candid look into sex, intimacy, misogyny, and identity.” –Kirkus
“Refreshingly, Shane depicts the good of sex work (its liberatory potential, for example) as thoroughly as the bad (its occasional reinforcement of patriarchal structures). This slim volume packs a punch.”—Publishers Weekly
“Shane is an erudite writer, funny and disarming, and her memoir holds space
for all of the dualities of love and sex work.” —Booklist
“With An Honest Woman, Charlotte Shane's already-formidable clarity and grace as a critic and essayist are here turned so honestly, so ruthlessly to an examination of womanhood—of how women make ourselves known to ourselves and to each other under patriarchy. She is one of the very, very few writers I want to read writing about our lives with straight men.” —MELISSA GIRA GRANT, author of Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work and staff writer at The New Republic
“The first book I’ve burned through in a single sitting in months. Elegant, candid, merciless and moving—it’s an experience to make a reader reconsider how love works.”—TORREY PETERS, author of Detransition, Baby
“I'm in love with Charlotte Shane's writing here, full as it is of clarity, earned beauty, and a deep intelligence at once cerebral and embodied, tender and brutal. I inhaled this book.” —SARAH THANKAM MATTHEWS, author of All This Could Be Different
Kirkus Reviews
2024-05-04
Shane invites readers into the bedroom to examine love and sexuality on a personal and universal scale, from her unique point of view as a sex worker.
In her 20s, the author began actively pursuing sex work, allowing herself to start to explore her curiosity about men and sexuality. In this memoir, she investigates the complex and often convoluted way in which sex is used as a currency in our personal and professional relationships. Early on, she writes, “my wildest dreams involved getting paid for being desirable because payment concretized validation….I reasoned that if I were accepted into environments where women were expected to be sexy…there must be a seed of sexiness somewhere in me.” With humor and wit, Shane openly shares tales of intimate client interactions. Astute in her social critiques, the author demonstrates her intuitive understanding of how people can build more fulfilling relationships with one another. She even shares conversations with her father about his separation from her mother. “I was the older child, and that may have played a role in my selection, but it seems to me that my father did what he did because I was female,” she writes. “If he needed care, I should have been the one to provide it because regardless of age, women are designated emotional custodians. He sought reassurance, not connection, in my pliability. His authority exerted pressure to make me stay put and listen, and I saw my father’s weakness in those moments—his vulnerability, his dishonesty, and his delusions.” As many girls do, Shane grew up being told that men’s feelings were more important than her own. However, through her sex work, rigorous self-reflection, and variety of experiences with men and women, she has found her voice—and it’s funny, authentic, and unequivocally honest.
A graceful and candid look into sex, intimacy, misogyny, and identity.
