An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work

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.)