Official Review: The Real American Gigolo
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Official Review: The Real American Gigolo
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Real American Gigolo" by Geoff W. Hampton.]
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The book is introduced as a memoir of the author and his secret career as a male prostitute and escort. This topic is what really drew my attention to this book, because the topic of sexuality, especially prostitution , is an interesting subject. Yet, after reading this book I don’t think that what he experienced was anything special, at least special enough to merit writing a book about it. The layout of the book was chosen well and the topic interesting, but the actual stories and characters lacked depth and meaning. The character development is severely lacking; I will get into this in a moment. Also the stories that could have been detailed and quite lovely were minimized to their bare bones and so I couldn’t immerse myself in the setting as I wished. Those two key factors are what made the rating for this book a 2 rather than the 3 or 4 that it has the potential to become.
The book begins with an introduction of the main character, Jeff, and of the first woman that he slept with where the terms of the relationship could be considered that of a prostitute and his client. Of course, this isn’t his main line of work since he has a day job and the only payment he receives from sleeping with women is a free meal. Each story shows a mini episode of what his life as a gigolo was like and the fun things that it entailed. Nothing bad happens in this book, nothing life threatening that is, until the very end of the book and even then it just ties up his career as a gigolo and forces Jeff to become monogamous.
There were few aspects to this book that I think make it interesting. They were the motivators for me to finish reading the book and committing myself to writing this review rather than stopping a few chapters in. The one that I enjoyed the most was the manner that the book was set up in regards to its chapters and their chronology. I think that Hampton does a good job in choosing the stories that he writes about and I like that he wrote about them like mini episodes in a series. The characters have recurring roles, but there isn’t a bleeding of different stories getting mixed together. Everything is sequential and makes sense. As a memoir, this writing style fits and is one that I prefer. It reminds me of Augusten Burroughs’s stories.
However, even though the book is set up in a pleasing manner; this cannot mask the lack of appeal that the actual story and characters had for me as I was reading this book.
“I wasn’t bad looking, but I definitely wasn’t a pretty boy.”
This sentence is a mixture of the various aspects of this book that I did not appreciate and it is found in the very first paragraph of the first chapter of the book. A clue to what is ahead. For someone that isn’t super beautiful, he is very particular about the visual appearance of the women that he agrees to “date.” He is very sparse in detailed descriptions of these women and himself. Mostly it’s generalizations and they made me think that he is a lot more vain and shallow than I think he is meant to be. At some point in the book he is describing the criteria that women must meet for him to “date them” and one of them is that they must be good looking. Okay, so this isn’t a horrible demand especially if he has to sleep with the woman at some point in the near future, but when its added to the way that he characterizes the women, it leaves a negative tinge on the whole book. He only describes their physical appearance in detail and a few times narrows this in on their breasts; along with the detailed focus on how well endowed the women are he calls them boobs and all I could picture was a 30-something year old college frat guy. He mentions that the women are married but rarely went into their jobs or tried to make these women, who are the main female characters of their specific chapters, into something other than another client. Since half of them are flight attendants it just adds to the impersonality that each woman is given; swap their names and they could have all been the same person.
“We landed in Thailand, went through customs; we were in a big city, and it didn’t look too scary.”
This sentence brings me to my second point that I made in the introductory paragraph. The underdeveloped settings and situations within this book really take away from a full and appeal story. Thank goodness that Jeff tells us that he’s in Thailand because other than that, it could be any underdeveloped country in the world that has big cities that don’t look scary. Hampton makes the mistake of telling rather than showing throughout the book and this is what makes it so underdeveloped. I understand that the book isn’t about the scenery but about Jeff’s life, but he takes 3 serious trips in the book and I think they deserve to be appreciated more. Here he doesn’t even name the city that they are in. So after reading about a trip to Thailand, which is probably an amazing experience, I don’t care. That’s what really kills this book; situations described like this make me not care about what Jeff goes through.
The last issue that I had was a placement choice of chapter 18. After reading about Jeff’s women and sexual exploits, reading a chapter geared towards teaching other men about how to get and treat women didn’t make sense. I think that this should have been at the beginning of the book, before the first chapter. It would make more sense to the chronology of Jeff’s life as well, since he learned the “rules” when he was in high school.
Overall, the book wasn’t completely bad. I didn’t feel the need to stop reading, even though there were points that were a little shaky. The book’s premise is interesting and if it was more detailed really interesting to read. However, it isn’t detailed so it isn’t on par with what I consider a good book.
I would give this book a rating of 2 out of 4 stars.
***
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Buy "The Real American Gigolo" on Barnes and Noble
View hassle-free sample of "The Real American Gigolo"
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The book begins with an introduction of the main character, Jeff, and of the first woman that he slept with where the terms of the relationship could be considered that of a prostitute and his client. Of course, this isn’t his main line of work since he has a day job and the only payment he receives from sleeping with women is a free meal. Each story shows a mini episode of what his life as a gigolo was like and the fun things that it entailed. Nothing bad happens in this book, nothing life threatening that is, until the very end of the book and even then it just ties up his career as a gigolo and forces Jeff to become monogamous.
There were few aspects to this book that I think make it interesting. They were the motivators for me to finish reading the book and committing myself to writing this review rather than stopping a few chapters in. The one that I enjoyed the most was the manner that the book was set up in regards to its chapters and their chronology. I think that Hampton does a good job in choosing the stories that he writes about and I like that he wrote about them like mini episodes in a series. The characters have recurring roles, but there isn’t a bleeding of different stories getting mixed together. Everything is sequential and makes sense. As a memoir, this writing style fits and is one that I prefer. It reminds me of Augusten Burroughs’s stories.
However, even though the book is set up in a pleasing manner; this cannot mask the lack of appeal that the actual story and characters had for me as I was reading this book.
“I wasn’t bad looking, but I definitely wasn’t a pretty boy.”
This sentence is a mixture of the various aspects of this book that I did not appreciate and it is found in the very first paragraph of the first chapter of the book. A clue to what is ahead. For someone that isn’t super beautiful, he is very particular about the visual appearance of the women that he agrees to “date.” He is very sparse in detailed descriptions of these women and himself. Mostly it’s generalizations and they made me think that he is a lot more vain and shallow than I think he is meant to be. At some point in the book he is describing the criteria that women must meet for him to “date them” and one of them is that they must be good looking. Okay, so this isn’t a horrible demand especially if he has to sleep with the woman at some point in the near future, but when its added to the way that he characterizes the women, it leaves a negative tinge on the whole book. He only describes their physical appearance in detail and a few times narrows this in on their breasts; along with the detailed focus on how well endowed the women are he calls them boobs and all I could picture was a 30-something year old college frat guy. He mentions that the women are married but rarely went into their jobs or tried to make these women, who are the main female characters of their specific chapters, into something other than another client. Since half of them are flight attendants it just adds to the impersonality that each woman is given; swap their names and they could have all been the same person.
“We landed in Thailand, went through customs; we were in a big city, and it didn’t look too scary.”
This sentence brings me to my second point that I made in the introductory paragraph. The underdeveloped settings and situations within this book really take away from a full and appeal story. Thank goodness that Jeff tells us that he’s in Thailand because other than that, it could be any underdeveloped country in the world that has big cities that don’t look scary. Hampton makes the mistake of telling rather than showing throughout the book and this is what makes it so underdeveloped. I understand that the book isn’t about the scenery but about Jeff’s life, but he takes 3 serious trips in the book and I think they deserve to be appreciated more. Here he doesn’t even name the city that they are in. So after reading about a trip to Thailand, which is probably an amazing experience, I don’t care. That’s what really kills this book; situations described like this make me not care about what Jeff goes through.
The last issue that I had was a placement choice of chapter 18. After reading about Jeff’s women and sexual exploits, reading a chapter geared towards teaching other men about how to get and treat women didn’t make sense. I think that this should have been at the beginning of the book, before the first chapter. It would make more sense to the chronology of Jeff’s life as well, since he learned the “rules” when he was in high school.
Overall, the book wasn’t completely bad. I didn’t feel the need to stop reading, even though there were points that were a little shaky. The book’s premise is interesting and if it was more detailed really interesting to read. However, it isn’t detailed so it isn’t on par with what I consider a good book.
I would give this book a rating of 2 out of 4 stars.
***
Buy "The Real American Gigolo" on Amazon
Buy "The Real American Gigolo" on Barnes and Noble
View hassle-free sample of "The Real American Gigolo"
Latest Review: "The Kiss" by Michelle Bolanger
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Veena1402
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The American Gigolo is commendable for the kind of conversational tone that the writer uses.The lucidity and smoothness of the narrative immediately appeals to the reader.One cannot argue against the author's claims when he declares himself to be a "silver tongued" man'.The memoir is an interesting piece of literature .It is a book that one cannot put down until the last page . :techie-reference 
