Belle De Jour: The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl

This chronicle of a year in the working life of a professional sex provider is taken from the author’s blog. It relates how she got into the business, what she gets up to with clients and the trials and tribulations of her personal love life (as opposed to her professional sex life).
There is always a delightful sense of voyeurism in the reading of somebody’s diary-even if they’ve made it public-and I don’t think I would be alone in expecting this particular diary to be a little more titillating than others. However as a representation of life as a sex worker I found it offered nothing that hasn’t already said elsewhere before. I suspect the reason this diary got the attention it did was due to its being kept in a public forum in the form of a blog.
First for the good: This particular diary has a fun and friendly tone to it making it very easy to read. The author is unrepentant about the nature of her work and talks about the business without trying to make it sound particularly glamorous or onerous.
Then for the bad: It really gets quite samey very quickly and ends rather abruptly (probably a result of it being pulled from a blog which continued on after the book ends).
Overall an inoffensive read but not one that has left me with an urge to read any of the many other publications of this author.-Lynn

Madam - Jenny Angell

When Abby graduated college she drifted from job to job until she began work as a receptionist at a brothel. Surprised she discovered that she really enjoyed the work, until her employer (who also rented her space to live) sent a punter down to her wile she was sleeping. Deciding she could run a call out service better than Laura, Abby chose a new name, a new location and a business title. Within a short time Avanti became Boston's premiere escort agency and Peach was known to provide excellent girls with one phone call.
Madam is Peach's story, as told to Angell, a former call girl who worked at Avanti. She's written her own story, an extract of which is included at the end of Madam - Callgirl is by far the superior work. It is coherent and interesting. Madam, on the other hand, is choppy and leaves out details that would enhance the story.
We learn about a variety of problems, like the call girl whose client expired mid act, or the client who decided to withdraw from his sex addiction and asked Peach to cut him off. But then the story ends, leaving this reader at least wondering what happened next. The most annoying of these was Jill - after several months of apparently promising work Peach learned Jill had been intimidating clients into giving her extra things (from tips to tickets to games). The story ends with Peach reassuring the client who finally revealed this to her that Jill would never know it was him who told, and organising a new girl for him. What did she do next? How did Jill react? Did this affect business with other clients? Was it something Jill had done with all if them? We'll never know. I also wanted to know about how Peach paid her taxes (prostitution being illegal in the US), tested new girls, and more about how she kept her public and private personas separate, particularly after becoming pregnant.
I finished the book but was unsatisfied. I should really have known better, as most memoirs in this vein tend to be sold more on their titillation factor than good writing. As I said, Jenny Angell's own story may be more compelling, though it won't reveal much about the day to day running of an escort agency as much as the day to day life of a high end prostitute. I'll keep you posted. - Alex

Candy Girl - Diablo Cody

In this autobiography, subtitled A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, Cody (better known as the writer of the film Juno) honestly described the year when, on a whim and (somewhat) out of character, she stripped in a variety of Minnesotan clubs. A pale and pasty cubicle dweller working as a copy writer after relocating to Minnesota to live with a guy she met online (or, as she calls it, the World Wide Waste of Time), she saw a sigh for a club's amateur strip night and decided to participate. One of only two actual amateurs, she didn't even place, but something about the experience resonated and over the next year and a half or so Cody worked her way from club to club, culminating in pay-per-digit one-on-one shows for men ranging from closet homosexuals to shoe fetishists (but water sports and other "fluid ounce" variations were strictly forbidden. Unusually, for a memoir of this type (and, indeed, memoirs in general), Cody doesn't reveal anything about her life growing up until the final chapter, and that itself is more a recap than anything else. Contrary to popular conception, she wasn't sexually abused (I was a little uncomfortable with her quip that this was because she wasn't attractive enough) or otherwise mistreated.
Cody's voice is detached, witty and amusing enough to hide the fact that she doesn't reveal anything too unsurprising in her memoir. It's surely not news that stripping's harder work than it appears, that the house take a hefty cut, that there are required minimums, that the drink prices are inflated or that partaking of said drinks is mandatory. In the end, it's that detachment that robs the book of warmth and human interest that would otherwise have strengthened the story. There's very little about the other women, and almost all of that is superficial. That's a shame, because I sense they may have had a more interesting story than Cody did. All in all an interesting enough diversion, but I'm glad I read it in the shop and didn't both buying it. - Alex