Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl [Paperback]

"rakish ... a deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties in an elite slice of the business just before the crash."
--The Nation

Praise for ‘Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl’:

‘Bridget Jones with attitude.’ Guardian

‘Fun to read…marks the transition of erotica from hide-it-under-the-bed to read-it-on-the-tube…Her sex scenes are delightful.’ The Times

'New York's latest literary sensation.' Independent

'Frank, fizzy, and not for the faint-hearted.’ YOU Magazine, Mail on Sunday

‘Chock-full of bad-girl secrets…tantalizing.’ Cosmopolitan

‘If you want a sassy read about a sparky New Yorker trying to juggle her professional and private life, then you'll love this…A startling debut that's a cross between “Bridget Jones's Diary” and “Pretty Woman”…You can forget the anonymously-written “Belle Du Jour”, that rather limp-wristed, supposedly true account of the working life of an upmarket London prostitute which was published to huge fanfare earlier this year. “The Diary Of A Manhattan Call Girl” is not only 10 times funnier, it actually has a storyline.’ Daily Mirror

‘Unexpectedly wise, observant and best of all – fun.’ Los Angeles Times

Married call girl Nancy Chan has been asked to do something outrageous – even by her standards.

Most favoured customer Milt has invited Nancy to his luxurious new villa in idyllic Provence. That's a lot of euros, but …

Can a (married) Manhattan call girl really holiday with a client? Seeing him morning, noon and night, coming up with new entertainments, and maintaining both a light tan and
a ‘professional' distance? Not to mention Milt's Viagra habit. In a difficult economic climate a girl can't always meet her quota, and Nancy's worried about losing her edge.

Nancy jumps at the chance to have a break from Manhattan (and from husband Matt) for a few weeks. Desperate for an alibi, she invents a vacation with her mom in southern France. In reality, Nancy is hard at work with some new playmates – Tini (Malaysian, with something extra), Isabel (a St-Tropez madam), and Serge (Isabel's hunky chauffeur) – while Matt grows more inquisitive. As Nancy discovers, the French countryside is ‘ten times trickier than Manhattan’ and nothing in her temporary world is quite what it seems.

When Milt's enigmatic cook Duncan turns up unexpectedly in Nancy's erotic fantasies, she begins questioning everything she knows. Can Nancy keep getting away with this?

I GOT INTO prostitution to earn my living but my decision was fueled by immature fantasies. Unable to renounce either my past or my fantasy life, I used my experience to build a new career as a novelist. Some people thought Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl was a memoir. It’s not, but the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, still brings e-mail asking if I’ve “tied the knot.”

With Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, people wonder if I had a customer involved with the Enron scandal. If I did, would I want to write about something that close to home?

Of course, I cavil when readers confuse my novels with my life. But perhaps I protest too much. Like Nancy Chan, our pragmatic narrator, I was a teen runaway who resolved to work in the high end of the sex trade - after seeing enough of its dangers. Nancy's friend Allison started at the top, sees the injustice in this hierarchy, and wants to change the world. There is a little of both in me, romantic idealist clashing with unapologetic realist. And maybe neither alone could have created a novel.

Some have accused me of making prostitution seem easy, but my point is different: for a prostitute, normal life isn’t easy. Despite passing for a banker’s respectable wife, Nancy doesn’t fit in. There’s anxiety behind the glamour, and this lends itself to humor rather than tragedy. That’s what moralists won’t accept, addicted as they are to unhappy endings.

During a radio interview, I was asked: “How could you dedicate Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl to ... your mother!” The stricter parent whom I rebelled against, my mother also taught me to read. When my first novel came out, there was a bookstore event in my hometown. In the audience was a family friend I’ve known since I was a baby. Sitting next to this aunty-figure was a man who asked: “Are you a nymphomaniac?”

Wondering if this would get back to my mother, I took a deep breath, and came up with an answer she might approve of. “Nymphomania,” I said, “was once a popular explanation for behavior we now attribute to economic factors.”

Tracy Quan lives in Manhattan. ‘Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl’ is her third novel. Tracy first wrote about Nancy Chan in a highly successful column on Salon.com