Customer Reviews

Belle de Jour: Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I found this book to be sexy, witty, charming and funny. It's an amusing and entertaining read, and gives you a glimpse of a lifestyle you probably know little about.

It's also taken, word for word, from her blog.

I started reading Belle's blog a few years ago and as I quickly got into it, I went back and read every entry from the beginning. This book is taken directly from the blog (minus a few "entries" in the book, and the Being a Call Girl from A to Z dealio at the beginning of each chapter). There is almost no new material, and what is new, is few and far between and not anything earthshattering.

Frankly, I was a little disappointed, being a devoted reader of her blog, to find out the book is just the blog, in hard copy. It for me was not worth what I paid for it, since I'd already read it for free, and can back and read it again, for free, anytime I want. Also, the blog has a lot more content, much of which is not in this book. She posts regularly.

I do recommend reading this book as it's delightful, but you may want to save yourself the $ and just read the blog. I think, personally, you get more out of it (since it's more comprehensive), and it's also current.

Belle de Jour (http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/) rightly won the Guardian Weblog award for the best written blog of 2003, and went on to become a blog phenomenon. Having secured a reputed six-figure publishing deal, this book promises to become a similarly phenomenal literary sensation, and there are already plans make it into a film. The mystery surrounding the anonymity of the blog's author generated something of a media frenzy in the first quarter of 2004, with The Times in particular applying its investigative powers to the task of hunting down the author and exposing their identity. However, such attempts proved unsuccessful and Belle's publishers have somehow managed to retain their marketing ace, despite the circulation of numerous rumours regarding who Belle may or may not be. With the initial spate of interest mysteriously on the wane, and Belle's anonymity safely in tact, the British newspapers have become engrossed in another sex scandal involving a some time high-class call girl, the details of which could very easily pass for an episode straight from the pages of Belle's blog. Having initially struck a resounding chord with her first-hand appreciation of the reality lurking beneath the surface of contemporary sexual mores, Belle now seems perfectly positioned as the definitive commentator of the post-Sex and the city/Bridget Jones zeitgeist. Couple this with a wit, intellect and honesty lacking in much contemporary British fiction, and Belle de Jour rightly deserves to become the British literary scene's equivalent of Michel Houellebecq. For a fuller account of the unfolding of the Belle de Jour phenomenon visit The Book Club Blog (http://natural-creations.co.uk/bookclub.html) for a full history and all the latest news and analysis on all things Belle.

Ditto another reader's observations on this. If you've been reading along with the blog these past few years - the book is an unfortunate duplicate. Or, I should say, 98% is duplicate, but unfortunately, that extra 2% is rather like the extra two minutes on some director's cut of a movie. Doesn't change the story, doesn't change the book itself, and you really could have kept it out - but guess that's what I get for not looking closely before I bought it.

Aside from that - if you haven't read the blog, the book is fun. Nothing earthshattering, just leisurely and running occasionally to voyeuristic.

The problem with Belle de Jour is that once you get past the initial voyeurism, there's no real substance. Belle's day to day life simply isn't that interesting. The book is mostly witty, only occassionaly introspective, and sometimes tedious, but always unprentenious and honest.

Belle de Jour, the shockingly intimate adventures of a london call girl has, by all accounts, become a cult phenomenon. The blog-slash-diary of an educated woman who resorts to prostitution to pay her bills for want of a regular job in a tough job market is by all accounts shocking, scandalous, candid, honest, voyeristic, and human. Her hunger for sex leads her into an unlikely job role, after facing rejection upon rejection in the real world. In between the sheets she finds acceptance, at first from men, and then for herself, as she becomes comfortable in her own skin with what and who she has become. Explicit and triple x rated she transports us in graphic detail into the world of prostitution and sex, and perfectly illustrates how we as human beings have deteriorated over the centuries. Even in the oldest of professions, new trends are developing in the sexual revolution, as women and men exchange new roles in a modern world, and Belle takes us there for first hand look.
Living in a world that has learned not to show emotion, Belle too has become one of the masses; a numb body going about the motions of life, lacking feeling, lacking real passion and enthusiasm for life, all the while desperately wanting to return to the feeling of "feeling alive." (146) Belle is not familiar with crying, yet she cries....(149) realizing she is "not all that happy"....and despite the pursuit of money and materialism the resultant ephiphany is that her life has led to "nothing significant."
Belle is a girl in a woman's skin - the girl who had a political opinion at age 8 is still the same young innocent girl who is aching for a return to such innocence and unhurried purity of thought. As we see in the following exerpt, Belle craves a cupcake, and the level of excitement is infectious, until we remember it is actually the voice of a woman.
"...and i insisted that we get two fairy cakes from the bakery with pink icing and little plastic hearts pressed into the tops..."(151)
Belle is still the little girl voice hiding in the adult female body - and for all that we know of the dark world of prostitution she inhabits, it is surpising to see her relatively unaffected on the surface by it, seemingly still able to find pleasure and an innocence in the small things and friendships that surround her.
Yet her innocence with cupcakes juxtaposed with her cynical blog about valentines day combined with the explicit nature of her material leads me to believe that while this is an undoubtedly accurate, honest and extremely candid account of her life, there is still something missing. She leaves nothing out which satisfies the voyeur in us; yet something is missing in her fundamental character and her view and interpretation of her world as we realize this is not normal, she is not normal, and most people do not turn to prostitution after a few bad job interviews.
I feel for the little girl trapped behind her sexual mask - she doesn't know how to tap into the identity of her real self without using her sexuality to play as a grown up in the real world. She is at once clean and dirty, eating to live, not living to eat.
The dislocation of the self is a rich topic, beautifully explored in painful detail in this unforgettable memoir. Five stars.

Really one of the books I couldn't stop reading it. No pauses, a continuous 2 days reading. It was very interesting and attractive. Honest and straight, the writer has the ability to present the moment, the most interesting happening, the most notable thought. Initially I did know that it was from a blog. But even when I figured that out, I didn't regret with the book. It was very interesting and far more different from reading a blog from a computer screen. Highly recommended!

As a fan of the adapted television show, I wanted to read the source material from Belle de Jour's original book. I am deeply impressed. I love how articulate she is, how pithy the writing is. I'm surprised she can be both forthcoming and reserved, in ways I would never have expected as a reader.

I could have just gone to her blog and read it for free.

Alas. I bought the e-book and it wasn't a disappointment. It was an all right read, not anything I didn't already know about call girls and escorts (there was a great article online somewhere, about 5 pages that went into a life of a call girl in Toronto who had 2 kids and how she made it work), but it was a good piece of fluff.

Would I buy it again? No.

A fan of the TV show, I wanted to read the original work. It was enjoyable and edgy. Obviously, it pays to be open-minded when reading a memoir like this.

I very much enjoyed reading about the life of a call girl. It is straightforward, witty and insightful. This book has also made me enjoy the tv series even more!