Some Girls: My Life in a Harem [Mass Market Paperback]

Jillian Lauren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2010

Read Jillian Lauren's posts on the Penguin Blog.

A jaw-dropping story of how a girl from the suburbs ends up in a prince's harem, and emerges from the secret Xanadu both richer and wiser

At eighteen, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The "casting director" told her that a rich businessman in Singapore would pay pretty American girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next eighteen months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, youngest brother of the Sultan of Brunei, leaving behind her gritty East Village apartment for a palace with rugs laced with gold and trading her band of artist friends for a coterie of backstabbing beauties.

More than just a sexy read set in an exotic land, Some Girls is also the story of how a rebellious teen found herself-and the courage to meet her birth mother and eventually adopt a baby boy.

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Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

At the age of 19, Lauren was trying to get a fledgling acting career off the ground while working as a stripper and call girl. When the opportunity arises for several girls to travel to the island of Borneo to be a part of the harem of the Sultan of Brunei’s youngest brother, Prince Jefri, for a few weeks, Lauren jumps at the opportunity. Telling her family she’s headed overseas for an acting job, she travels to Brunei for what she thinks will be a diverting and exciting two weeks. Once she arrives at the expansive estate, Lauren finds her only duty is to attend lavish parties each night and hope that she will be the one chosen to steal away from the party with the prince. Two weeks turns into a year, and Lauren finds herself increasingly involved in the vicious competition for the prince’s attention. While the surprising and exotic subject matter is sure to pique interest, Lauren’s graceful, introspective prose lifts her unusual memoir far above the level of mere titillation. --Kristine Huntley

Review

"Some Girls is a heart-stoppingly thrilling story told by a punk rock Scheherazade. Lauren writes with such lyrical ease - the book is almost musical, an enduring melody of what it is to be a woman."
-Margaret Cho

"Lauren... is a deft storyteller, imparting equal parts poignant reflection and wisdom into her enlightening book. A gritty, melancholy memoir leavened by the author''s amiable, engrossing narrative tenor."
-Kirkus Reviews

"Some Girls would have been riveting even if Jillian Lauren had merely illuminated the murky world of high-class prostitution for the general reader. The fact that she does so with humor, candor, and a reporter''s gimlet eye is an added delight. But Some Girls also undertakes the deepest challenge: it reveals how and why a middle-class kid like Lauren found herself in such a line of work--and how she got out."
-Jennifer Egan, author of The Keep

"Wow, what a story! Jillian Lauren''s Some Girls is the most exotic sex worker memoir I''ve ever read. Imagine being paid to play with the richest men in the world? Few women dare to speak of their youthful sexual adventures with such honesty and clarity. I can''t wait for the movie."
-Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D

Catfights, mad cash, priceless jewels -- what''s a young girl from Jersey to do? Welcome to the sultan''s harem, a secret world filled with artful seduction and parties that never end. What starts out juicy quickly turns soulful in this elegantly crafted, multi-layered stunner of a memoir. Lauren strikes the perfect balance between light and shadow in her spellbinding tale of one woman''s exotic search for identity and true love."
-Rachel Resnick, author of Love Junkie

"Lauren is a gifted and lyrical writer whose coming-of-age tale has the reader firmly under its spell by the end of the first paragraph. Her emotional insight is deeply penetrating, allowing us to feel kinship with her even as we marvel at her rarefied adventures. Lauren generously brings us along for an amazing ride as she seeks, and then finds, meaning and connection in her life. I couldn''t put it down."
-Nina Hartley, author of Nina Hartley''s Guide to Total Sex

"Jillian Lauren''s Some Girls takes readers into a world so dramatic, it seems almost too far out to be true. But the bracing realism that infuses her storytelling lifts the veil of harem life and shows us the gritty truth of life in fantasy-land. Her transformation from dream girl-for-hire to rock-n-roll mama proves that resilience and reinvention, more than diamonds, are a girl''s best friend.
-Lily Burana, author of Strip City

"Some Girls reads like a swiftly-paced novel, but gets under your skin in a way fiction can''t. This is a striptease of a book, sexy and mesmerizing at first, but at the end a very real woman stands in front of you, exposed and vulnerable. I couldn''t put it down, and when I was done, I couldn''t stop thinking about it."
-Claire LaZebnik, author of Knitting Under the Influence

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Plume; 1 edition (April 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452296315
• ISBN-13: 978-0452296312
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (104 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,701 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Author and performer Jillian Lauren grew up in suburban New Jersey and fled across the water to New York City. She attended New York University for three minutes before dropping out to work in downtown theater, where she performed with Richard Foreman's Ontological Hysteric Theater, among others.

Her New York Times bestselling memoir, SOME GIRLS: My Life in a Harem, was published by Plume in April 2010. It has since been translated into fourteen different languages.

Her novel, PRETTY, will be released on August 30, 2011.

Jillian has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Flaunt Magazine, Opium Magazine, Society, Pale House: A Collective and in the anthology My First Time: A Collection of First Punk Show Stories.

She has read at spoken word events across the country and has been interviewed on such television programs as The View, Good Morning America and Howard Stern. She was a featured dancer with the infamous Velvet Hammer Burlesque. As a performer, she has recently worked with directors as diverse as Steve Balderson, Lynne Breedlove, Austin Young, Michelle Carr and Margaret Cho.

Jillian regularly blogs at TODAY Moms, The Nest and Jillianlauren.com.

She is married to musician Scott Shriner. They live in Los Angeles with their son.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

203 of 228 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected, April 3, 2010

By 

Swati S. Desai (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Some Girls: My Life in a Harem (Mass Market Paperback)

(What's this?)

This story bills itself as about one girl's life in a modern day harem.

It is, tangentially, about that.

More than that it is a story about a troubled young woman, who was on drugs, who became a prostitute, who had a falling out with her parents and ran away to become an "actress". But she was a terrible actress so she stayed a prostitute.

The first quarter of the book is that story.

Suddenly, a mysterious person promises this girl a lot of money if she is willing to "work" abroad. She takes the job.

She ends up in the "harem" - if you want to call it that - with a number of other prostitutes.

The story discusses the politics of life in a harem, how other women are not your friend, how they stab you in the back when you're not looking, etc. etc. The story also discusses in detail how absolutely dull it is to live in a harem. The prince they are waiting on features very minimally in this story.

The end of the story is the young woman's redemption, how she sees that she has moved past the harem, and now has a family of her own and is happy and normal, etc. etc. If that seems abrupt, it is. The "normalization" of the drug addicted prostitute is not discussed - it is simply a "and five years later, she was sitting in her living room with her children and her husband, and she saw a news report about her prince, and she wondered..." Lame.

The story wasn't particularly well written, especially in the beginning, and that seemed to be on purpose - to highlight the transition from the stupid young prostitute to the smug world weary married woman. I don't feel that this technique was effective.

This writer has no ability to paint you a picture and show you what her experience was like, what the palace she stayed at was like, what the prince was like, what the other girls were like. She gets bogged down in physical descriptions (like "blond", "thin", "wearing designer clothes") and misses the more helpful character attributes.

The author would have done much better fictionalizing the account and writing a romance novel or adding some interesting facts about life in a harem. Sensationalizing her experience. Instead, it seems she was constrained to write mostly about the petty politics between the ranked harem girls. Which is about as interesting as an episode of Survivor.

I would not recommend purchasing this book, it wasn't to my taste at all, as I don't enjoy stories about redemption that don't discuss how the subject was redeemed. I don't enjoy books about sensational subjects that don't discuss the sensational. All in all, a fast read that isn't really worth the time at all.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Sad, May 29, 2010

By 

Serene (Marina, CA, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Some Girls: My Life in a Harem (Mass Market Paperback)

(What's this?)

Some Girls is the biographical story of Jillian Lauren, a young Jewish-American girl. Jillian is a rebel, embracing at the age of 16 the life of a stripper and a sex worker. Molested several times, and with a poor self image, and suffering bouts of depression and anorexia, Jillian struggles to be an actress, before finally deciding to travel to Brunei to work as a harem girl.

I found Lauren's `voice' to be intriguing, but I had difficulty relating to some of her decisions and choices. She seemed lost half the time, and many of the things Lauren felt were cool or intriguing seemed sad and disturbing. She lies to those who love and care for her, including her boyfriend and family, does drugs, and has unprotected sex and lies to her boyfriend. There weren't a lot of upbeat bits to make this story go down well, nor was life in the harem really anything worth writing about. Just a bunch of catty mean women vying for the attentions of a predator.

This was an ok read, but not something I felt really gripped me or anything I felt uplifted by. By the end of the story I was rather glad to put it down, since I felt after reading it, that Lauren's life was neither glamorous nor intriguing, just so much wasted potential. The story left me with a sad feeling.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read but I wish it contained more in depth details..., May 19, 2010

By 

Gratitude "Mommy to my two wonderful little o... (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Some Girls: My Life in a Harem (Mass Market Paperback)

(What's this?)

When I saw this book, SOME GIRLS: MY LIFE IN A HAREM by Jillian Lauren, I have to admit that it intrigued me..at a glance, one can't help but wonder if she was 'given' to a king or prince to join his harem? Was she abducted and forced to stay? Did she go willingly? Why and how did she end up there and how is it that she left that she came to write a book about it? Did she escape? Is this REALLY a true story?

It turns out that it is a true (and believable I might add) story about a young aspiring actress who answered to a casting call that ended up being a 'casting call' for fresh new girls to join a harem belonging to a prince of Brunei. As dramatic as it sounds, I could see how easily an eager, young, naive girl who was struggling financially could lose her morals and judgement to keep her self safe could get involved in something like this. Think of all of the young girls flocking to Hollywood or attending some audition or photo shoot by some sleazy creep with alterior motives? Lucky for Jillian, she went willingly, wasn't abused and was allowed to leave (the harem) willingly - when her time was up that is. Regardless of being paid hoards of money and receiving expensive gifts of jewelry and designer clothing shopping sprees, she WAS expected to stay within the palace compound and at times, even in a particular room and expected to be available whenever the prince 'wanted' her OR when he wanted his brother, the Saultan to have her as a gift for an afternoon.

As interesting as the basis of her book, I felt her whole experience and sharing her story with us was wasted on mediocre writing talent...granted, I'm no author myself but it got under my skin to the point where I had to put the book down or skim over areas where she goes on and on about the minor details of what someone is wearing, how they wore their hair that night but yet skipped over gaping holes such as to effectively express how she was feeling at the time or emotional details about the prince. Although she described physical characterists about various characters, I feel like I never got a chance to 'know' them. Being that it was based in Brunei, I felt that she overlooked describing more of their culture and customs in detail as well.

All in all, I guess I'm glad that I read it but then I feel cheated...I feel that 1/3 of the story is missing. Sure she's covered the surface issues but it's missing the heart of the story, the real meat of her experience and of all of the characters in the book. The last chapters in particular were very choppy...like she was rushed to have to meet a deadline or was simply ready for the book to be over with. I'm sure it was much longer but in my head, it 'feels' like she blazed through the ending so fast that she was in one place one day, then woke up tattooed another day, then married with a child the next. Perhaps she didn't want to go into THAT much detail but I can't recall reading how her husband feels about her past....what kind of person is he? How did he take it when she explained his past and further more, how he reacted when she decided to pen this memoir? In the end, she feels to me, a person who is devoid of emotion...perhaps she is emotionally distant and that's why her book is missing so much 'substance'? She feels to me, a person who holds a lot in yet maybe doesn't even realize that she does. In my opinion, in every day life, that's OK if that is how you want to carry yourself but if you are going to write a book about some very personal experiences, you HAVE to open up and let us in, you HAVE to show us more inside of your thoughts, emotions and the thoughts and feeling of those around you. If she was in fact rushed in the end, perhaps her story would have appeared to be more in depth if she had someone else helped her write it?

I give it a solid 3 stars although I WISHED it had been a 5 star book...