Quan, who put her career as an elite Manhattan prostitute on hold to become a writer, is the author of a popular salon.com column chronicling the adventures of fictional call girl Nancy Chan. Those biweekly installments grew into this reality-based novel. Nancy's central dilemma, hashed out in her diary and with her shrink, Dr. Wendy, is whether to give up hooking when she becomes engaged to her sweet Wall Street-whiz boyfriend, Matt. Her two best friends (and colleagues), Allison and Jasmine, offer little support on this front. Jasmine is firmly against marriage, and Allison, who is 30 going on 19, is too obsessed with her own problems (including her foray into the sex workers' activist movement) to be of any help. The descriptions of Nancy's "dates" read like soft porn, but Quan does pose some interesting questions about gender and sexuality and a certain brand of "sex-positive" feminism (represented by writers like Camille Paglia and Susie Bright). But the main point here is to be erotic and playful.