Through the lens of her years spent as a sex worker, Charlotte Shane offers a reckoning of what it means to be a heterosexual woman and a feminist in a misogynistic society.
Shane’s memoir begins with recollections of her adolescence, when she was an avid student of desire, and it ends with a moving account of her marriage to a man she loves. In less than 200 pages, the book manages to be part autobiography, part anthropological investigation and part feminist tract ... A strange and poignant love story.
Slim but mighty ... Shane’s memoir reads more like a series of opinion pieces than a chronology of events ... As insightful as it may seem, An Honest Woman does have its blind spots — and uncharacteristically judgmental sore points ... May defy expectations of the genre. Yes, it’s a racy, salacious tell-all at times, but it’s also a refreshingly candid and provocative think piece — one that questions the blurry boundaries of attachment when it comes to pleasure, the complicated nature of intimacy, and the murkiness of feelings surrounding who and how we love.
