Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl cover

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl

by Tracy Quan

This is the diary of Nancy Chan, turn-of-the-millennium call girl, who lives and works on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Although she’s in her thirties, she’s at the top of her career–a better twenty-five-year-old today than when she was twenty-five. Most of her regulars don’t realize how long she’s been working. Her new fiancé, Matt, an up-and-coming M.B.A. on Wall Street, does know her age and how long she’s been working but not what she does for a living. And at least for the time being, Nancy wants to keep it that way. Nancy is full of contradictory desires. She frequently has to choose between making love and making money. On good days, she gets to do both. Surrounded by devoted, wealthy, and powerful johns, some of whom want more than just sex, and caught between two complicated call girl friends who, shall we say, make her life more interesting than it really needs to be–not to mention an unwitting fiancé who has started to apartment hunt and arrange a wedding–Nancy navigates the tricky currents of the world’s oldest profession. With one foot in the bedrooms of her rich and demanding clients and one in the straight world of her fiancé and his family, Nancy demonstrates, in her inimitable fashion, that if you know the dance, you can keep those two worlds from colliding. At least for a while. Based on the highly successful Salon.com column “Nancy Chan: Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl,” this wonderfully intelligent, sexually frank, rollicking novel gives us fresh insight into the machinations and politics of being an expensive call girl in the modern world. Tracy Quan pulls no punches, gives no apologies, and has written one of the best and most honest books yet on the topic.

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Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?