An Honest Woman

A Memoir of Love and Sex Work

By: Charlotte Shane

Narrated by: Caitlin Kelly

Through the lens of her years spent as a sex worker, Charlotte Shane offers a “rigorous and compulsively readable memoir” (New York magazine) exploring what it means to be a heterosexual woman and a feminist in a misogynistic society.

“A memoir of sex work that is also a poignant love story” —The Washington Post

In her early twenties, Charlotte Shane quit her women’s studies graduate program to devote herself to sex work because it was a way to devote herself to men. Her lifelong curiosity about male lust, love, selfishness, and social capital dovetailed with her own insatiable desire for intimacy to sustain a long career in escorting, with unexpectedly poignant results.

Shane uses her “unsparing honestly” (The New York Times Book Review) and her personal and professional history to examine how men and women struggle in their attempts at a romantic and sexual bonding, no matter how true their intentions. As she takes stock of her relationships—with clients, with her father, with friends, with married men, and later, with her own husband—she tells a candid and haunting tale of love, marriage, and (in)fidelity, as seen through the eyes of the perpetual “other woman.”

Braiding the personal and the universal, An Honest Woman is a merciless and moving love letter to men and an indictment of habitual dishonesty, a condemnation of every social constraint acting on heterosexual unions, and a hopeful affirmation of the possibility for true connection between men and women.

Uncomfortable Truths

This is a brilliant, albeit short, foray into the insights of an educated (master's degree) woman who is truly in control of her sexuality. She is completely open and possesses insights into her own psyche and erotic development sadly lacking in many non-fictional accounts. No academic work will shine a light into the shadows of this central aspect of human behavior. The work will undoubtedly be the subject of condemnation by the neo-puritans that infest both wings of the political spectrum. If you find it provocative, in subject or treatment, ask yourself why instead of judging the author her perspective.

How typical horror story sounds. I’ve now read about five books like this and they are so the same.

I didn’t like the backstory as it shows how people end up making these types of decisions.

beautiful work

feels so personal and reminds me some little episodes of my life. narrator did great job

Word choice

Flowery language use to describe a somewhat boring life of high end sex work. And she love her husband just so you know.

Honest?

I read other reviews before purchasing this book (both Audible & for my Kindle) and I purchased it anyway. I am glad I did. I found Charlotte Shane's account of her life both honest and unique. I liked that she did not try to blame anyone or any one thing for her entrance into the life she chose as a paid sex worker. Instead, she wrote that she liked and loved the mystery of boys as a young girl. In that way she is not dissimilar to men that pursue the mystery of women in the same way as many young boys that pursue the mystery of young girls and continue that pursuit of women as they grow into adulthood. That once again pointed out that there really are women that will admit that they are the same as men only with different objects of their desires. it was these men that are the same ones that were her clients! That is one of the realities of life; not for everyone but for at least as many men that choose the monogamous life that is considered and promoted as the ideal. I am glad that she can take both her old life and her new life in stride without adopting the victim mentality too. That would turned the story into just another false morality play.