The surreal life and bizarre times of a college-educated career call girl. A brave new look at the oldest profession, A Roaring Girl is, without a doubt, the most unusual book of its kind ever written. Part edgy, X-rated memoir; part sex-positive, pro-prostitution polemic, H. A. Carson's 400-plus page interview with an anonymous "escort" known as "The Thinking Man's Hooker," is an unflinchingly honest presentation of one woman's professional life and Weltanschauung in all its sordid/surreal, gonzo/glamorous glory. From start to finish, the book is, much like the subject herself, intelligent, outrageous, relentlessly "in your face," and utterly unique. A Roaring Girl presents a prostitute who is neither gilded angel nor fallen victim nor pseudo-sexy, "nymphomaniacal" sophisticate. She is the sex worker as female outlaw/entrepreneur; the prostitute as world-class iconoclast. Perhaps most intriguing of all, A Roaring Girl lays bare the surreal world of pay-for-play psychopathia sexualis with humor and compassion as well as the unflinchingly analytical insight of a "happy hooker" swapping stories with Kinsey or Havelock Ellis. Raw, irreverent, visceral, disturbing, and funny, A Roaring Girl is, above all, a "roaring" good read! It is astonishingly literate, unabashedly erotic; flawlessly analytical; shockingly explicit, and surprisingly (and often darkly) humorous. Carson's mystery woman turns a phrase as effortlessly and as expertly as she formerly turned tricks. Whatever else can be said of her, the whore can write. A Roaring Girl is a revolutionary work. It is also fascinating. You will try, unsuccessfully, to put it down.
