Sunday, December 5, 2010

32. Some Girls: My Life in a Harem

by Jillian Lauren (339 pp.)

The premise is great: an American woman ends up in the harem of the brother of the Sultan of Brunei. The actual harem part is riveting. The way they recruit the girls, the culture of the harem, the mind games, the way the women treat each other. But wow, it's amazing how this woman managed to write her own memoir and make herself into a completely unsympathetic protagonist. Let's go through a checklist of memoir drama points: Sex industry worker? Check. Daddy issues? Check. Depression? Check. Disordered Eating? Check. Unplanned pregnancy? Check. Abusive parents? Check. Search for birth mother? Check. Plus a couple I've never seen before: a life changing ginormous tattoo and trauma over feeding live mice to large snake she purchased. Unrepentant money grubbing followed by aw shucks, I just needed to find myself.

I recommend if the harem stuff sounds intriguing. The rest of it is easy to skim through.

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