The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl

Author: Belle de Jour/Dr. Brooke Magnanti
Link to book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intimate-Adventures-London-Call-Girl/dp/0753819236/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1281129543&sr=8-1
Main characters: Belle, N (best friend), The Boy (Belle's boyfriend), A1 - A4 (4 close friends) & 'The manager'
Genre and ideal audience: Autobiography in diary format. Designed for adults, but aimed at women.

Now, I'd be surprised if there was anyone in England/UK who wasn't familiar with this book, the blog it came from or the TV series it inspired, featuring Billie Piper. For those who are not familiar with the concept, the title pretty much says it all. Belle aka Brooke was a highly paid (£300 per hour) call girl in London for a number of years, and, after deciding to detail her exploits in a blog, was approached to structure said exploits into novel format. It includes the typical conflicts that you'd expect from this kind of novel - managing personal relationships with getting paid for sex, dealing with how your boyfriend feels about your choice of job and what to do when you get an 'unusual' client or request.

Belle starts by making it very clear that she is in fact a whore. And not flippantly. She's being deadly honest and open from the start, giving no false pretences and making it much more believable, I think.

'The first thing you should know about me is that I'm a whore.

I don't mean that in a glib way. I'm not using it as an analogy for working a desk job or toiling away in new media. Many of my friends will tell you how temping for a year or ending up in sales is equivalent to prostitution. It's not. I know this because I've been a temp and I've fucked for money, and they are in no way similar. Not even the same planet. Different solar systems altogether.'

The book continues in this manner, giving often too graphic details of some of the things she gets up to on the job, and how to manage it best. In that sense, the TV show 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' (of which I have Season 1 on DVD) manages to stay true to this very well, often taking script directly from the book. It spans a 6 month period, from November to April (not sure what year, although it was first published in 2005 so I'm guessing late 2003/early 2004)

The general public reviews are particularly mixed on this, with some saying that they're not even sure it was written by a woman due to the style of writing, and that it doesn't translate to a particularly good novel. With reference to the style of writing, I completely disagree. Yes, it is written in a blunt and sometimes narcasstic manner. However, doing that job for a prolonged period of time when it's not anything you really wanted to do in the first place - The real Brooke is a research scientist! - is going to change the way you see things. I figure that you would have to be that way to get through the day.

The way I see it, is that it was intended to be a daily diary, a blog. Never a novel, despite what has happened in publishing. It is important to treat every little section, every day as a separate piece of writing, inspired by different moods and events, because that's what it is. This makes it easy to read as you can stop quite easily or read it in little segments as and when you please. However, due to this it doesn't flow like you would expect a normal novel to, and it can be quite difficult to read continuously.

Would I read it again?: This is one that's part of my collection, so I've already read it more than once. But I have to take quite a gap between reads, unlike some of my other books which I can read over and over.

All in all: 3.5/5: a no-holds barred account of life as a call girl, but it was clearly not designed to be a book, but a blog. I believe it would be better to have read it in its original format, updated daily. Belle/Brooke does write well, giving a proper insight into her situation, however some of it seems just too clichéd, especially on the relationship front. I would recommend it to anyone into this style of writing, and anyone looking for something kinda girly but full of the kind of sexual script that you don't really get in 'chick novels'

Review By - SapphireDreams