the web The Book Club Blog

Sunday, January 16, 2005

The Sunday Papers Review "The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl" by Belle de Jour

"There are times when you are forced to remind yourself that the author is a prostitute rather than the strait laced leader of a local reading group."

- Craig Brown, The Mail on Sunday, Today

Belle de Jour receives a disparaging mauling from Stephanie Merritt in today's Observer.

Erotic? You're having a laugh, Stephanie Merritt, The Observer, Sunday January 16, 2005.
Stephanie Merritt is Deputy Literary Editor of the Observer and the author of Gaveston (2002) "a journey into the dark heart of obsession and sexual politics - Faber & Faber" and the forthcoming Real (Feb 3, 2005) "the tale of a love affair between a struggling playwright and a fading, older actor - The Independent"

". . . here is a book which proves that, for anyone who believes that some things simply are qualitatively better than others, it really is time to go and live in France, or any other country where publishers take pride in what they produce, rather than lifting badly-executed soft porn off the internet and cynically slapping it between hard covers. . . this book is nothing more than a collection of unsophisticated fantasies played out in language that is a curious hybrid of internet chat rooms and the Mills and Boon Black Lace imprint. . . It's not the content, however, but the style, or lack of it, that offends. . . It's easy to see how this found a large audience online; less easy to see who would pay 13 quid for the hardback edition when you could rent several porn videos for the price and get better dialogue."

Hard on the heels of Rachel Cooke's similarly uninspired review in the new statesman, Jan 15, 2005.

"Sorry to be pompous so early in the new year, but this book illustrates pretty much everything that is wrong with modern publishing. . . Why, I wonder, has no one stopped to consider that what catches fire on the internet will not necessarily combust between two hard covers and a pretty dust jacket? . . . Belle is sparky; she has a voice. Yet her ramblings, for all their occasional sauciness, read like little more than the idle jottings of a girl whose mornings are free. Quotidian is the word that comes to mind. Not only is her narrative repetitious, it lacks any kind of climax, which is rather ironic in the circumstances. Add to this unenticing brew one's inevitable suspicions about the enterprise, and what you are left with is a rather apt feeling of grubbiness; I'm afraid you read this book for one reason, and one reason alone. . . What Belle does best is reveal the scant, prosaic motivations of men who pay for sex; and it is this lack of embellishment that finally convinces you of the authenticity of her strangely banal document. . . Take away the whips and paddles, the lubricants and glass marbles, and what you are left with is an account book. Funny that a publisher wrote her a fat cheque, I presume, without noticing this."

Meanwhile, writing in The Sunday Times, India Knight returns to the questionable authenticity of Belle's claim to be real and suspects that men will believe in Belle and the world she portrays and enjoy the book, but that women will not because they are likely to see through it for the male fantasy she believes it to be.

Autobiography: Belle de Jour, India Knight, The Sunday Times, Jan 16, 2005.

"I’d have thought the point of going to a prostitute was for her to be really fantastic at really outré sex, not for her to sweetly share her thoughts on The Sea, The Sea, but there you go. . . There is a question mark over whether Belle exists at all, and after reading this book . . . I must say I have my doubts: she sounds (and reads) like a by-numbers male construct, or a deliberate female take on the same. . . Consider: very unusually indeed (uniquely, one might say, for someone in her line of work), Belle doesn’t seem overly preoccupied with money. . . Also, Belle discovers early on that she makes a good dominatrix. But then she decides to do the normal jobs, too. This is extremely odd. . . To muddy the waters still further, Belle’s own fantasies, as opposed to the fantasies she is paid to enact, involve being on the receiving end of a quite unusual degree of brutality. . . I was disturbed, in the course of this book, to come across more peddling of the notion that women long to be brutalised. . . But I didn’t like this book, with its spoiled-girl braggadocio . . . There is something about Belle’s relentless me-me-me tone throughout that reminds me of how every woman who gives birth imagines herself to be the first person to experience motherhood, and thus imagines herself to be rather more fascinating than she actually is. . . There is an interesting first-hand book to be written about prostitution. Sadly, this ain’t it. And the sex is unsexy. That’s if you believe a word of it, of course — and I expect believers and nons will divide along gender lines. Male readers might reflect that all that is missing from the book is a story about a punter so talented, so magnificent, that our awed, grateful protagonist waives her fee. Female readers might just roll their eyes. "

However, The Mail on Sunday selects Belle's Intimate Adeventures as its book of the week and chooses to have it reviewed by a man - Craig Brown. Brown does not disappoint India Knight, awarding Belle 4 out of 5 stars, although he justifies this more on the basis of her book's literary merit than its pornographic appeal. Moreover, he draws attention to the behind-the-scenes mystery that surrounds Belle de Jour by focussing upon the novelty of this book being published in the company of more typical Weidenfeld & Nicolson stablemates. One wonders what he might be suggesting. Paul Johnson, Belle de Jour certainly is not. Yet could Craig Brown be hinting that he knows a little more than he's letting on?

Book of the week: Belle de Jour - A Tart with the Heart of a Writer, Craig Brown, The Mail on Sunday, Jan 16, 2005. (No link available yet for this review)

"The firm of Weidenfeld & Nicolson used to be best known for publishing the memoirs of superannuated statesmen and dowager duchesses. That it should now be publishing the memoirs of a prostitute is surely a matter for rejoicing. . . it is highly unusual for a prostitute to become an author. More often than not, it's the other way round. . . There has been some conjecture in the Press that BdJ is not really a call girl at all and that her diary is, in fact, a work of fiction by a jobbing writer such as A. S. Byatt or Lady Antonia Fraser. Well, I may be wrong, but to me it reads like the real thing, largely because it is, for the most part, so deeply unsexy. An amateur would have aped the essential fantasy of pornography, but Belle's sexual descriptions, though frequent, are closer to forensic biology, or to an overcompetitive game of Twister, than to anything pornographic. . . Any job described accurately by an insider is interesting, and she proves that prostitution is no exception. . . it is the peripheral details that make this account so readable. . . (In comparison to The Sexual Life of Catherine M.) the more downmarket BdJ is the better writer, simply because she has an eye for detail. . . Like . . . Cynthia Payne, BdJ has discovered that most of her clients yearn for something quite separate from sexual gratification: they simply want human contact, or what call girls call GFE (Girlfriend Experience) . . . There are times when you are forced to remind yourself that the author is a prostitute rather than the strait laced leader of a local reading group. I suspect that at the back of her mind lurks the hope that prostitution might prove a handy step on the career ladder to being a columnist . . . Belle's diaries certainly show that she can write . . . She also has an ear for dialogue, which should serve her well if she wants to take a crack at a novel. But perhaps I am sounding too like one of those men who says: 'What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this . . ?' To be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson is not something to be sniffed at, and, unlike so many others, she hasn't had to marry a duke to achieve it."

Does anyone know whether anyone who knows the author is going to review BdJ's book?

Whilst we're on the subject of being published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, without having had to marry a duke to achieve it, it is perhaps worth noting that The Observer's expert on all cultural matters sexual - Lisa Hilton - has her other book "Mistress Peachum's Pleasure," also to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, due out on March 10, 2005.

For those who don't know, it's a biography of eighteenth-century actress Lavinia Fenton, who originally played Polly Peachum in The Beggar's Opera and married the Duke of Bolton after being his mistress for 20 years.

For an insight into Lisa Hilton's world, if you've still to read Belle's blog, then I can't think of a better place to start than here: "I'd rather be a mistress" By Lisa Hilton, Evening Standard, 8 January, 2003.

"My husband needed someone who was gentle and restful - not someone who complained about being unfulfilled, laughed at his work and made him feel small because he hadn't read much. . . There was nothing particularly wrong with either of my husbands, but sometimes it felt like everything about marriage - and especially the sex - was just another domestic chore. Pay gas bill, buy pak choi, shag husband, take cat to vet. . . With two doomed marriages behind me, I vowed never to do it again - a fairly radical departure from my traditional family background. My younger sister and I had an idyllic childhood in Cheshire, while my father worked as a lecturer and my mother as a teacher. . . Since I was broke, I started writing a book about Louis XIV's mistress, and was lucky enough to find an agent. I rented a flat in Marble Arch and moved on - determined not to let history repeat itself. . . . While morals have always been the preserve of the wife, it's the bad girls who get the glamour. After all, Nell Gwyn, Helen of Troy and Christine Keeler are still household names, but who can remember the wives they supplanted? Mistresses have changed the face of nations and brought down governments - often while wearing some really good outfits. Adultery and luxury go hand in backless Damaris knickers, and I enjoy the indulgent consumerism of being a mistress tremendously. Proper relationships are for joint excursions to Sainsbury's; adultery is for licking crëme de marrons off your lover in a hotel suite when he's meant to be at a conference in Basingstoke. . . Avoiding emotional intimacy can be very relaxing, and it's something women find difficult to do. I didn't care if he loved me, or found my opinions interesting - I just wanted someone to have fun with. Although being a mistress enabled me to exaggerate my femininity - I had the time to make sure I was always perfectly groomed - it also allowed me to glimpse what it is like to be a man, and it was an education. . . Being a mistress is a quiet and neglected art, and deserves a champion."

- Read what Evening Standard Readers made of Lisa's article. What was that Toby Young was saying about losing friends and alienating people?

It appears that Literary Saloon the literaryweblog at the complete review has decided they're going to pass on Belle's book just in case its worse than what they describe as "the execrable international mega-hit, 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed." Following up on this decision the Literary Saloon declare Belle's Intimate Confessions to be a book: "which we can barely believe anyone published -- save for the fact that they possibly might make some money off of it. But the reviews are so savage that even that possibility seems less and less likely." Referring to The Ham & High's opinion that: "it eventually makes for tiresome reading. Billed as a "twenty-first-century Moll Flanders", she is little more than a cut-price, pornographic Bridget Jones." The Literary Saloon suggests that Belle's publishers "could use that as a blurb on the book; there are probably a fair number of readers that would convince to purchase the book." However, they do go on to say "(We do hope this is the last time we mention this book, but it is hard to resist this stuff.)" So perhaps it will get a complete review afterall.

Posted by Nick @ 08:31 GMT

|