Not always sure of its own stance on escorts, this book still offers an effective behind-the-scenes tour.
A debut memoir describes how a small-town Christian girl ends up running a Las Vegas escort agency, charging up to $1,500 an hour.
Growing up in a charismatic Pentecostal sect, Rodman wasn’t allowed to cut her hair, wear pants, or play (even watch) sports. But she always had a strong interest in sexuality; by age 5, she was masturbating “for two or three hours every day.” (Rodman mentions childhood molestation by an unidentified person but doesn’t dwell on it.) Eager to leave home, she married at 17 but quickly divorced. Rodman earned an associate degree in cultural anthropology and worked at an Oregon mental health facility, but after a wild weekend in Las Vegas, she wanted more of that adventure and moved to the city. She started out waitressing, then tried stripping. Broke, she agreed to a “private dance” and then to prostitution; after earning $1,000 for an afternoon, she made it her profession. She eventually headed her own escort agency until one of her most popular girls was outed as the Olympic runner Suzy Favor Hamilton. In her memoir, Rodman reveals how high-end escorting works, from first contact to final payment. Through candid vignettes, readers get the lowdown on typical clients and their desires, from companionship to kinky, as well as different levels of prostitution, including girls, clients, and pimps. Throughout the book, Rodman veers between celebrating this life (freedom, easy money, being the center of attention) and criticizing it (degradation, anomie, addiction). She never really resolves this contradiction, disingenuously characterizing her own agency as “a professional screening and marketing firm” that “helped men find intimacy again.” But what’s being sold, as she shows from her own experiences, isn’t the give-and-take of true intimacy: “I want to feel in control of something in my life,” she imagines her wealthy, married client saying during sex. Few readers are likely to muster the sympathy for him that Rodman does.
Not always sure of its own stance on escorts, this book still offers an effective behind-the-scenes tour.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9965682-0-3
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Maktub Press and Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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