While this is ostensibly a book about the very glamorous high-end of the sex trade, I found most notable its description of anorexia, the most accurate that I have ever seen in print: "The tricky thing about starving yourself is that it starts out feeling terrible and then it feels great until you realize you can't stop."

Interessantes Buch mit einem Einblick in eine fremde Welt.

Ihr Vater hat sie geschlagen und sie wurde adoptiert und nahm Drogen. Dann ist sie sehr schnell in das Leben als Prostituierte herein gerutscht. Das es beim Sultan mit dickem Bankkonto und nicht in der Gosse endete war dann letztlich Glück.

( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2368992.html

account of a teenager who graduated from New York escorting to joining the girls maintained by the Sultan of Brunei's younger brother in his palace, providing company and occasional sex. As one might expect, there was a constant jockeying for position, with one woman (who we are told was a former Filipino soap star) ensconced as #1 girlfriend until she decided to leave; Jillian Lauren describes her own short-lived ascent to the position of #2 girlfriend, and one senses that her heart was not in the intense political and emotional combat with her co-workers which would have been necessary to maintain that position. She got a decent amount of cash and vast amounts of material goods in return for being available for sex with the prince at his whim, before she too decided that she had had enough and moved back to the USA.

Given that harems have been a part of how courts operate in many different cultures throughout history, it is interesting to read this very recent account. Of course, the girls in Brunei were able to leave much more easily than most historical harem women were; they were paid handsomely for staying (though they were also under strict orders not to leave the palace, which is the only coercive element reported), and one suspects that the royal family's external agents got a decent commission as well for finding them. The voices of sex workers are pretty silent in general, and it's refreshing to read a story that packs in so much without being titillating.

Lauren waited fifteen years to publish her account, which perhaps gave her the necessary perspective to make it a clear-eyed coming-of-age story. It's uncomfortable reading in places - particularly, I found, in the American sections at the beginning and end, rather than the Brunei episodes which are too different from my own experience to do more than boggle at. A farly brief and breezy read, which you finish with a strong sense that the author is glad to have put it all behind her. ( )

I love reading memoirs from sex workers, but I admit that I was disappointed with this book. It had trouble holding my attention, which is very rare for me.

Truthfully, it wasn't the topic matter that disappointed me, and I could even have looked over the bits I found boring such as the endless gossiping and listing of things she bought, but it just held no emotion. I'm not entirely sure when she penned the book, as the events take place in 1991 and this book was published in 2010, but it lacked a lot of emotion. It couldn't draw me in because it felt like it was a second hand retelling of what happened. This contrasted with the fact that there was a bunch of meaningless facts about her past that sought to show us what type of life she led but instead just fell flat.

I really wanted to like this book, but I just couldn't feel connected to the author. ( )

I don’t like the ending. I don’t like how it is so happy and perfect and surreal. This book, to me, was – is – about the ugliness of this world, about the harsh realities some people have to go through every day, about the fact that everything becomes meaningless to a person after time. It was not about having a loving husband, or adopting a beautiful baby boy, or finding a happy ending.

The Summary

For those who haven’t yet read this book, this contains some mild spoilers.
For those who have read this book, this is slightly biased as it is coloured by my personal opinion

Jill is a stripper. A hooker. A prostitute – however you want to call her. She is constantly down on cash, is an aspiring actress whose only notable role is a cheerleader at a cheap porno flick. After joining an escort agency through one of the other actresses also playing a role in the movie, she is offered a chance to go to Brunei and party for two weeks and get an outrageous amount of money in exchange for entertaining his Royal Highness Prince Jefri Bolkiah.

Whilst there, she gets the prince’s attention and thus extends her stay by another week, another month, another two months. Then she realizes that she misses New York and makes up some excuse about her father being in a life threatening situation and flying home. Again, she extends her stay in New York constantly, and goes through an abortion, a tattoo, and the rest of her money whilst she is there.

Flying back to Brunei, she realizes that she no longer hold the prince’s affections and that, basically, a lot has changed. One of the other American girls there give her the name of an agency and she flies home to find her biological mother.

The Review
I was not that impressed with the story. The plot sounded interesting, yes, but there isn’t actually as much about Brunei as one might expect from the summary. This book is basically about Jillian whining about her life, how she sinks into depression if her scenery doesn’t change every two months and how her boyfriend didn’t care enough for her.



This book would’ve gotten two, three stars if everything in it weren’t true. The fact that she managed to find the courage within herself to write this book makes me add at least one star to my rating – after all, in fiction you can be endlessly creative, you can write about minuscule detail, but in non-fiction, or rather, in autobiographical memoirs, all you can write is what you know, what you remember.

I think is book is a good book – it is great if you look at it from the point of a memoir, but not so good if you look at it as a book you’re reading. It’s really brave of Jillian Lauren to lay her life bare before thousands, if not millions of readers about the globe, and, well, what can I say now except that I wish her husband, son and her a good life? ( )