Conville & Walsh
literary agency
Playing the Game
- Author: Belle de Jour
- Category: Fiction Commercial
- Publisher: Orion(UK)
- Pub date: 18 October 2008
- Length: 320 pages
About Playing the Game
Belle’s first foray into fiction still finds the former call girl on sparkling and outrageous form, as the escapades become even more risky
– MIRROR
An extraordinary number of call-girl memoirs have surfaced recently… Belle differs from these sexcapades in the most fundamental way, however, in that she can actually write… she is brilliant – frank, witty and observant… Whoever you are, Belle, you can give up the day job and keep writing
– OBSERVER
Playing the Game keeps the reader entertained and interested, thanks to Belle’s quick wit and straight talking
– LONDON LITE
Game over?
Belle is starting to wonder if she should call time on the call girl business… get a day job, a life free from secrets and maybe even have a ‘normal’ relationship with the Boy. But how will Belle cope with the nine-to-five, a staggering decline in her underwear budget and no more paying clients? After years of sex and subterfuge, Belle must discover who she really is, and find out what she wants when she’s not paid to say yes. Perhaps leaving the game only means joining another – but it’s going to be a hell of a ride finding out the new rules.
As Belle explores life and love as a free agent, her story is wildly entertaining, smart and refreshingly frank. Punctuated with advice, anecdotes and reflections in her inimitable voice, this is a story of secrets and lies, scabrous wit and more than a little lust. Belle de Jour has intrigued, amused and occasionally scandalised a nation with her real-life adventures as a call girl. Now Belle’s imagination has free rein in this dazzling new novel.
About the Author
Belle de Jour and her Internet diary came to widespread popular attention in the UK when she won the Guardian’s Best-Written Blog Award in December 2003 (she was shortlisted for the American equivalent in 2004). Her witty and frank observations of working in the sex trade and also of the common concerns of many young women living in the metropolis – dating, shopping, parents, partners, career – struck a chord with readers who flocked to the website. Even before the frantic media interest in the anonymous author’s identity, the site was registering around 20,000 hits every day. With the publication of THE INTIMATE ADVENTURES OF A LONDON CALL GIRL, her anecdotal memoirs of sex clients and family lunches, of bondage and home decorating, of perverts and boyfriends became a fully fledged book, and Belle de Jour the Bridget Jones for the post-’Sex and the City’ generation.