BROTHEL

An unrevealing glimpse of daily life in the sex trade.

In the late 1980s, Albert, a medical doctor with expertise in public-health issues, approached a representative of Nevada's legal brothel industry to ask about interviewing prostitutes on various matters of sexual health. Then as now, the brothels were AIDS-free, a matter of much interest to epidemiologists and sociologists alike—and something of an advertisement for the business. The representative finally consented, assuming that Albert would at least report that the brothels were safe. He got something more with this book, which is an enthusiastic defense of the “working girls” of the famed Mustang Ranch near Reno, who mix feigned pleasure with grim resignation as they engage in assembly-line sex with a never-ending stream of customers. Albert repeatedly interviewed many such women about their work, who responded more or less willingly to her inquiries (though one of the madams had ordered them to talk, saying that “they needed to give something back . . . for the privilege of working in a legal house”). Psychologically scarred, exhausted, and sometimes stalked by obsessed customers, these prostitutes—whom the author, in unnecessary PC moments, refers to as “members of the brothel community”—provide Albert with plenty of titillating material, which she processes with a mix of clinical detachment and righteous indignation on their behalf, and all in prose that limps across the page. At heart, she concludes, “These women are just like the rest of us,” a summary that will doubtless not go over well with moralists and activists of many stripes, but that may give a prostitute or two a warm feeling of self-validation.

There's some news here, particularly on how sex workers can help prevent the spread of disease. But there's not much depth, and readers are likely to respond to Albert's report from the field with a shrug.