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"  Some Girls, by Jillian Lauren   Add another book to the pile of alterna-sex-worker memoirs\u2014but this time with an international twist. Lauren goes from theater student to private dancer to escort to harem girl at breakneck pace. At times, I found myself wondering if it could possibly be true: Who knew such things still existed? But in the end, I didn&amp;#039;t care, holed up in my apartment, turning pages until the end. If you, like me, were trapped in an airless undergraduate life in some boring Midwestern college town, you&amp;#039;ll be more jealous than you should be at Lauren&amp;#039;s adventures.\u2014Angie Kritenbrink, Seattle, WA    Wincing or not, Lauren is able to tell us about her time among the party girls paid to decorate the dance hall and bed(s) of a prince of Brunei without arrogance but also without shame. The book is scandalously exciting in the best tell-all tradition and not at all gratuitously graphic; rather, it is mature and verges on nostalgic. The prose is deliciously fluid and unsentimentally introspective. This is a woman who knows she is the product of her choices and experiences. As Lauren herself asks throughout the book\u2014what would Patti Smith do? My guess is that she&amp;#039;d read this book.\u2014Alta Dawson, Los Gatos, CA   Jillian Lauren is one ballsy lady. Some Girls is a bold memoir, and Lauren doesn&amp;#039;t shy away from her mistakes, her naivety, her troubled childhood, or the fact that she slept with the Prince of Brunei for a shopping trip, money, and presents. Some Girls is the ultimate late-night read, one where you might sneer at the premise, might refuse to believe Lauren is telling the truth, but you&amp;#039;ll stay up all night to get to all the juicy details.\u2014Alyssa Stewart, Missoula, MT   At first the florid descriptions were off-putting, but as I settled into the story, Lauren&amp;#039;s writing style started to feel appropriate to her journey through the rococo palaces of Brunei, where she worked as a paid escort or, as she describes it, a harem girl. Her story is interesting and showed me a world I&amp;#039;ll never experience. She tries to draw together other threads from her life\u2014her relationship with her parents, her search for her birth mother\u2014in a way that never quite comes together. But then, whose life story flows like a novel? All of our experiences dangle with loose ends.\u2014Lore A. Guilmartin, Houston, TX   Lauren&amp;#039;s life in a harem involved flying to a foreign country and handing over her passport\u2014while remaining a prisoner used for sex. This is a terrifying prospect, yet it never seems terrifying to her. She acts like it is simply a lucrative business opportunity. Her lack of apprehension makes the story feel fake. To read this book, one gets the impression that being a hooker is a fun, easy way to get rich. That, along with the author&amp;#039;s drug use and unprotected sex, makes this story disturbing, mostly because she doesn&amp;#039;t seem aware that this behavior might be disturbing at all.\u2014Marie Robinson, Crofton, MD   This book is like a train wreck. It&amp;#039;s horrible to think about, to witness, to concern yourself with the details of, and yet you can&amp;#039;t help but throw yourself into the juicy, horrible scene and stay there until the dust has settled. In Some Girls, Lauren leads us through her troubled teens in a wealthy New Jersey suburb to her entry into the seedy strip clubs and escort businesses of New York City to her unlikely transition across the world to serve the sexual and ego-related whims of the handsome Prince of Brunei. This book draws back the curtain on the secret sexual needs of the absurdly wealthy and how those who do it manage to do it. The book is entertaining and enlightening, and it may well leave you trying for days to untangle the brain knots to explain how such an explosion of resources could be used to satisfy the intricate erogenous desires of so few when there is such a tremendous need for basic, life-sustaining resources around the world for so many.\u2014Jenji Henson, Austin, TX   Lauren&amp;#039;s journey of personal growth is both fascinating and uplifting.\u2014Melissa Moos, Sterling, CO   Bonobo Handshake, by Vanessa Woods   At first I was annoyed by the personal anecdotes and the anthropomorphizing that Woods does with the animals throughout the story\u2014until I realized that that was the point. Woods is not a scientist and never pretends to be one. She has written an engaging account of her time in a country with remarkable animals, showing her readers how easy it is to love bonobos. She deftly weaves current affairs in Congo into the narrative, along with her personal experience of how these animals affected her. I don&amp;#039;t always like her, or her boyfriend, who features prominently in the story, but her story is nicely written all the same.\u2014Marie Robinson, Crofton, MD   You might think Bonobo Handshake is a book about monkeys. And it is. It&amp;#039;s about the bonobo\u2014a peaceful, overtly sexual, and very unusual relative of the chimpanzee. The author&amp;#039;s experiences with bonobos leads her on a tremendous adventure deep into Congo, into reflection about her own abilities and values into contemplation of human strengths and foibles and the requirements for a peaceful, loving society.\u2014Jenji Henson, Austin, TX   Woods travels to Congo with her fianc\u00E9 in this compelling memoir and is soon drawn into the beauty and tragedy of this country, both human and animal. Her intimate, sometimes awkward approach to the issues at hand endears her to the reader. She starts out as a directionless twentysomething following her man but is quickly absorbed into her new environment, which helps her find her voice.\u2014Angie Kritenbrink, Seattle, WA   Woods tells of her time at a bonobo refuge in the Congo, working to save members of a species that&amp;#039;s as close to humans genetically as the chimpanzee, though much less well known. Woods attempts to put her experiences in the Congo in context through the ugly history of Congo&amp;#039;s wars and political machinations, and she also tries to connect these wars to her father&amp;#039;s experiences in Vietnam. Unfortunately, she does not succeed. The various threads of the story lay unconnected alongside each other, rather than being woven into a cogent whole. Though I&amp;#039;m no prude, I was distracted by the derivation of the book&amp;#039;s title from the bonobos&amp;#039; habit of greeting each other and their human keepers by rubbing their genitalia on each other.\u2014Lore A. Guilmartin, Houston, TX    Burmese Lessons, by Karen Connelly   While in Burma doing research for a book, Connelly meets and falls into a passionate love affair with a Burmese revolutionary. With sharp insights and often painful moments of clarity, she attempts to mold herself into the potential role of wife to a man who is heart-and-soul part of something larger than himself and much larger and more consuming than their relationship: the fight for Burmese democracy and freedom. It is a testament to Connelly&amp;#039;s excellent writing that it is not clear from the beginning whether this romance is destined to last or is doomed. Her journey inside the minds and hearts of the Burmese people struggling daily for their dreams through malaria, death, torture, and bright moments of laughter and love is harrowing at times, but is told in a clear, compassionate voice.\u2014Alta Dawson, Los Gatos, CA   Connelly gives us a clear but subtly written story of her travels through Burma as it underwent one of its many periods of political upheaval, falling in love with a guerrilla officer in the process. Connelly does not make the mistake so many western writers do of putting herself at the center of the narrative. Instead, she shows the horrible challenges facing the Burmese people, acknowledging that her identity as a white, Western woman protects her from experiencing the true horror of their lives.\u2014Lore A. Guilmartin, Houston, TX   You know that Connelly&amp;#039;s love for her rebel leader, Maung, cannot end well, and that makes the book painful.\u2014Alyssa Stewart, Missoula, MT "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/books/reviews/a11149/elles-lettres-june-444186/>