Review by Booklist Review
Society will always have a fascination with sex workers: their finances, their power, their day-to-day lives. Shane began camming in her early twenties. The work performed in front of a webcam offered flexibility, creativity, and reliable cash flow, and eventually helped usher Shane into the industry on a deeper level. This book explores Shane's observations from her career and its impact. Sex work taught her about men and power, as well as why society scorns prostitutes. For Shane, it comes down to the fact that sex workers break down gendered expectations and fearlessly do business with men. The author traces her ease in sex work back to her platonic, adolescent comfort with the affection of boys, whose rambunctiousness and heat she loved. Shane also explores how sex work shaped her understanding of marriage, though it did not exclude her from it. Shane is an erudite writer, funny and disarming, and her memoir holds space for all of the dualities of love and sex work.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
