Booklist Review

Review of the Day on Booklist


Why would a bright young Welsh woman with an honors degree from Cambridge University work as a stripper in Manhattan’s Times Square? The answer, writes memoirist Fowler, is a simple five-letter word: money. In this titillating tell-all, Fowler reveals how a long wait for a visa and frustration launching a journalistic career landed her in the sleazy—and oh-so-lucrative—business of taking off her clothes. From the start, Fowler was able to distance herself emotionally as she danced in the dark spaces where desperate men came to quench their desires. When she stepped onstage, she became sexy, soulless Mimi (a name an acquaintance gave her for her self-centered ways). One day, a handsome, Eton-educated Englishman enters the strip club, and Mimi finds herself performing for a man who would have once been her peer. A romantic entanglement ensues. But is “Eton” in love with Mimi or Ruth? When an article about “Mimi” appears in the New York Times, interest from several book publishers promises Fowler a ticket out of her tawdry life. But it’s harder than she thought to leave the lurid limelight behind. Eyebrow-raising revelations about the sex industry abound in this sharp, racy, and relentlessly candid tale.

— Allison Block

busy busy busy

So I'm going to NYC on Wednesday 30th for some interviews and press and shit, and then doing a road trip to LA. Or going to LA and doing a road trip to NYC. And stopping off in between. Whatever. It's been hellish this week trying to get my articles done on time, teach, entertain the fat Indian lover and pack my life up in preparation for my new tenants. Not sure how long I'll be in the US. Like most of my life, I haven't really planned it. I have a bed for the first night and I'll take it from there. However, the main point of it all is to sell lots of words and write the second book and get the first book to sell lots. And keep doing yoga. And make new friends and have a wonderful life.

OK, I am seriously wiped out from this hectic week. Can't write... bed....

Outlook

Just booked my flight to NY this morning...

I was on this thing yesterday. It was a little weird. I think everyone expects me to have some enormous ideology behind every choice I make, whereas in actual fact I just bumble through life finding everything quite interesting regardless of its impact upon International Zionism or Feminist Queer Theories or what have you. I think I prefer it this way.

You Only Vote Once

Oh Barack, Barack, we had such high hopes for you. I was in New York for Super Tuesday, Fat Toosday, and the condescending consensus held by most New Yorkers was that Hillary’s the Presidential choice for ole white ladies with sausage dogs. I neither know enough about Hillary’s preferred canine, nor did the appropriate research to condone or dispute this particular view, but it’s an image that’s stayed with me over this juicy bitch-slapping sesh between Barack and Hillary. Ms. Clinton and her evil minions reclining in a leather chair on her hidden island fortress, cradling a small dachshund while plotting another vicious stab at the nice, upstanding young Barack, rather like a sinister female Blofeld…

I was all for Barack at first. He’s young, he’s hot, he writes nice books with fine upstanding American rhetoric, he’s fantastically earnest, he really believes he can make a difference, and he’s so sweet and dignified when it comes to Hillary’s sly little digs. The latest and now rather boring squabble over Barack’s unfortunate comment characterising small town voters as people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," has done little to dispel this view. ‘Gosh, he’s really like me!’ I thought when his words were first reported. But as with most things he’s said over the election, as soon as Barack realised his comment was in the slightest bit controversial, he retracted it and issued an apology. Oh Barack, why? Can’t you stand by just one little thing you say? Or at least get the teensiest bit of a dig in back at Hillary, cackling away on that island fortress of superiority? Hillary’s looking like the evil gangster, her and her minions of old white ladies with their sausage dogs, but Barack just isn’t James Bond yet.

“Now it may be that I chose my words badly. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last. But when I hear my opponents, both of whom have spent decades in Washington, saying I'm out of touch, it's time to cut through their rhetoric and look at the reality," he said in Pittsburgh, a quaver in his voice at all the meanies being nasty to him.

From our own island fortress of Grand Britannia it may seem that Hillary’s digging her own grave here, with her snide little asides about “elitism”, the energy with which she leaps upon Barack’s unfortunate comments and worries them to death, like my childhood sausage dog Hiney and his favorite rubber bunny, but like Blofeld she has a Master Plan. Waiting in the wings are those legions of old white ladies whispering their sweet nothings to the Super Delegates, armies of sausage dog-owning influencers. While publicly espousing feminist ideals and proclaiming that all they want is a new man sans vertebrae, all the old white ladies really want is a harking back to the days when a man was an insensitive bastard who would fart in public and tell a woman such as Hillary to shut up. Lacking that man, they’re going for the next thing with a penis. No, not McCain, Ms. Clinton.

Oh Barack, didn’t you watch From Russia With Love? You Only Live Twice? We’re rooting for you, we all are. We like you. We think you’re really nice. We adore the fact you’re the only candidate who genuinely wants change and might even like America more than you like yourself. But you’re up against Blofeld here, and she’s in it to the end. She’s not going to stop, and that nice little defensive stance isn’t going to hold up much longer against the super-villain.

Incidentally, my mother, who has much akin with Hillary Rodham Clinton, put Hiney my childhood dachshund to sleep on the unfounded charges of incontinency because she never liked him. Be warned, ole white ladies. Even your pets aren’t safe if Hillary gets into office.

The moral of the story is clear. Barack, be a bastard. Just once. For your own good.

Bereft in Berlin

It has been a week of loss and bereavement.

Firstly, the facebook group dedicated to hating me: 'Ruth Fowler: Talentless and Pointless', disappeared shortly after I joined it. And then a fat posh bitch (Annabel Watson, the ugly spoddy one with glasses on facebook if you want to send her missives of facebook love) who lived next door to me in uni and who I could secretly never stand announced dramatically and unprompted that I wasn't a very nice person and blocked me on facebook.

I am coping well with the grief though, thank you for asking.

There really are no brown people in Berlin are there? I think it's the whitest place I've ever been in. I flew in to see my sis last night and ended up getting drunk on whisky sours with two Germans called Klaus Bob and Klaus Martin. It was all very innocent. We talked about American politics and their babies and Klaus Bob asked me would I kiss him but I said no. I have a hangover today, but am bravely struggling on through adversity and tragedy. I really wanted to join that facebook group.

Off to drink more in Berlin (Me: "So, why was it divided into east and west again?" Pause. Her: "Let me get the guidebook out")

Midgetism

My dad tried to get me to take down the last post, worried I might get charged with anti-dwarfism.

Well, to set the record straight, I love midgets and dwarves, they are amongst my favorite people, and my best friend is a midget.

In fact, my fat Indian lover and I have discussed adopting either a child with two faces, or a midget child, and I have to say I'm leaning towards the latter because of my deep personal love and respect for dwarves and midgets. Midgets, incidentally, are better than dwarves as they are better proportioned, but it all depends how fussy you are about aestheticism when choosing a child.

Gosh, we could have our own circus! How much fun would that be? Who says becoming a parent is the beginning of the end? All those possibilities...

Dwarves

This weird little dwarf who looked like a drug addict just came to look at the flat. I told him straight out I didn't care if he wanted it, he wasn't getting it. He looked too weird, like he wanted to run a dwarf brothel or something.

I really want a boyfriend to sort this shit out for me. Why are boys so frikking useless? Date me and take over my life you morons.

Not That Hot

I come with a disclaimer:

Not That Hot.

It's because everyone seems to think that I glide everywhere on six inch clear plastic heels, my nipple tassels gaily swinging, my perfectly manicured talons caressing my airbrushed thighs as I daintily sashay my way through life as a former stripper. The reality is I spend my life supine in stretch fabrics, reluctant to vacate the Ikea red sofa to apply make up or nice clothes. The sad thing is I am now privy to the secrets of hot. I know how to make myself look nice. I just can't be arsed, and I know that by the time I motivate myself, my tits will be by my ankles and my dewy skin corrupted by crows feet. The thought that I'm wasting the best years of my life, on this sofa in front of The Sopranos, has occurred to me, but my natural state is extreme apathy. Consider this phone conversation the other day:

Boy: "Hiya. I want to put you on all fours and eat out your arsehole"

Me: "But I'm watching the Sopranos Series 5. Go away."

Not to mention it would be rude of me to engage in sexual activities when I am betrothed to another (my green card husband - Hi D!). I've noticed in America people preface conversations with things like "Hey" "How are you?" and "Nice weather", and in England it's all "I want to eat out your arsehole", "Do you think my cock is huge or just big?", and "I think I have a bucket cunt, could you check?"

I miss America. I'd be hot for you America. I just can't be bothered for England.

Back to the sofa.

I want this on my jacket copy

"She should be a huge public success, as sociopathic narcissists so often are."

Superb!

Jizz

Blowing my load elsewhere at the moment...

Not a happy bunny - an arsehole who was meant to rent my flat for a year backed out at the last minute so now back to square one. Someone rent Chav Central from me soon please! I need to get to Manhattan! I hate people who use exclamation marks! I'm turning into a fucking moron!! Shoot me now!!!