Economic Sex

Ellen Pilon is a library assistant in the Patrick Power Library at Saint
Mary’s University in Halifax.

Sarah Stauton, protagonist of Economic Sex, is confused, immature, superficial, emotionally unstable, and insecure. Unmarried but eager for male sex partners, she experiences a long line of escorts. She is not mature enough to develop a real relationship with a man. To her, the “image” is important; she frequently refers to how she appears (“She liked their presentation together”). She is Cathy of the comic strip without the humor: alone, unable to form successful lasting relationships with men, yet preoccupied with them. Sarah plays games to attract men, thinking she is in control. Her traditional upper-class upbringing has caused a conflict in her: she disparages it but depends on it. On the one hand she tries to rebel against it by being a Bad Girl (furtively — only she knows) and securing a job on her own, but on the other hand she exults in the status wealth gives her. She displays her family’s wealth before her men. She is a social climber, falling “in love” (so she says) with Nick because he lives in New York, a different life style from hers in Toronto and one she covets.

The book is like a case study. We learn all about Sarah present and past ad nauseum, all her romps in bed and her experiences growing up. The details are so painstaking that they smack of autobiography, of a young author venting steam, denouncing her family at the same time as she boasts about it and flaunts it. Sarah is an unlikeable character; her immaturity remains with her through thick and thin, despite periodic philosophizing reminiscent of undergraduate days. Granted, given her background and her parents, Sarah has a few problems; but Whyte does nothing more than paint a portrait. Sarah never changes, never learns, never grows up. Whyte’s philosophizing at the end is an attempt to show a new Sarah: “We must learn to trust and more, respect, our own individual questioning thinking minds buzzing away inside of our bubbling bodies; giving us warm intelligent life.” These thoughts are peripheral: Sarah doesn’t budge.

The story is an interesting case study of an immature “healthy wealthy Canadian sex kitten” who is proud of herself yet afraid to admit it. But by the end of the book the reader is thoroughly sick of Sarah and of the author’s stringing words and phrases together in non-sentence style, an attempt at stream of consciousness that irritates rather than stimulates and that would make Virginia Woolf turn over in her grave. The back cover bears two quotations: “‘Silliest damn book I ever read’ — Prominent male lawyer” and “‘I knew she could write.’— Ali-Janna’s mother.” Trust the lawyer.