Child No More

May 20, 2002
In chatty, colloquial style, Penthouse
columnist and 1970s cult heroine Hollander (The Happy Hooker) details the nonhooker events of her life. The memoir begins and ends with the death of her mother, Germaine, and focuses on her relationship with her parents. The only child of a volatile and sensual couple (her father, Mick De Vries, was a Jewish-Dutch-Indonesian physician and Germaine was a German-French model 15 years younger), Hollander was infatuated with her father and jealous of her mother, yet loved both passionately. This family triangle defined Hollander's life, as did the harrowing experience of being interned by the Japanese in Indonesia during WWII, where all three of them were tortured and nearly killed. Readers expecting a juicy sexual tell-all will likely be disappointed. Hollander details a series of romances, including current lovers Romke (a man 25 years her junior) and Dia (a woman 15 years her junior). The most explicit memories, however, involve wishing to be mistaken for her father's lover, baths with Daddy and a spanking scene with her father to which she attributes her first orgasm. There is no exploration of why she became both prostitute and madam, exactly how she made her considerable fortune or whether she missed the "Happy Hooker" days after the success of her bestseller and her deportation from the U.S. and Canada. In Jerry Springer–era America, this memoir seems terribly tame and, at 59, Hollander not so much past her prime as no longer in the sexual loop. B&w photos. (June 4)Forecast:Regan will simultaneously publish a 30th anniversary paperback edition of
The Happy Hooker. While that book has a certain kitsch appeal,
Child does not. This latest effort probably won't win Hollander new readers, despite a national broadcast and print media campaign, author appearances and a not-very-recent jacket photo of her in a leopard-print bikini.

June 1, 2002
Hollander, best known to the world as the Happy Hooker, pens a memoir that is deeply moving and sexual only at the fringes. This is a story about family ties: Hollander's affectionate, exasperating, and surprising relationship with her parents and their complex relationship with each other. Those who remember Hollander as the saucy seventies' swinger may be taken aback by her origins. The daughter of a German mother and Jewish father, she was born in Indonesia where her father was a doctor. Soon after the Japanese occupation, the family was separated, and Hollander and her mother barely survived an internment camp. Amazingly, all returned to Holland, where young Xaviera spent her childhood recovering from this trauma, forging a strong bond with her father, and dealing with her jealousy toward her mother, who in turn was jealous of the other relationships in her husband's life. Hollander, wisely, does not deal overly much with her "career." She starts the book with an affecting description of her mother's last days and ends in that same space. Many mothers and daughters will recognize themselves here; externals seem to melt away in the light of that universal bond.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)