CALLGIRL by Jeannette Angell

Finished Sa 8/31/14

I learned about this book when I was researching THE MOST DANGEROUS THING by Laura Lippman. This book was the August, 2014 selection for the Contemporary Book Club, and in an interview on Youtube Lippman said that CALLGIRL was a book that she was reading, and that she really enjoyed. Boy, she wasn't kidding! This was one of the most fascinating books I've read in a long, long time.

Angell has a four year undergraduate degree in Psychology from Harvard, a Masters and a Doctorate in Social Anthropology, and was working as a teaching assistant making $1,300 a class per semester; two classes. Her boyfriend wiped out her savings accounts and racked up a huge bill on her credit cards. She tried to work as a sex 'hot-line' operator, and found that she couldn't handle it.
Set in Boston. Harvard/MIT

By chance (an ad in a flyer) she meets 'Peach' who works as a madame at a moderately high-end escort service, and Jeannette finds her niche as 'Tia'.  Peach sets the price and screens the clients, and gets $60 off the top. Jeannette (as Tia) calls when she arrives, she gets the money upfront (although repeat customers are allowed to pay at the end), and Peach calls back at the end of the hour so that the client is aware that the encounter has ended and it will require more money for it to continue.

400 pound fat man who tries to collect info on the callgirls to control them. Jeannette never tells anyone that she is a teacher and keeps that part of her life separate.
A call girl friend of Jeannette's who becomes a free base addict and steals money from Jeannette numerous times.
Jeannette falls in love with an Indian graduate student only to learn that he was only trying to cause a hooker 'to give it up for free'. Tia learns what is going on when she hears one of his friends congratulating him on his answering machine.

The book is not very sexy, but is really about how people view sex. Jeannette is really an actress playing a sexual role.

She was teaching a class about people in asylums throughout history. She claims that women were institutionalized by a man and were kept in the institution regardless what the healthcare pro's of the time felt. The man that filed the paperwork was the only one who had the power to free the woman regardless of what the doctors felt.

Also a class about how people grieve and their feelings on Death. And, finally a class on prostitution which was a smash hit.

Amazon book link-
http://www.amazon.com/Callgirl-Jeannette-Angell/dp/1579621104