Nobody who has never depilated could have written such a book
Nobody who has never depilated could have written such a book.As a character, Belle de Jour is confusing. She is a tomboy in stilettos, a displaced northerner at home in the heart of London and as independent as she is vulnerable. To see her, with her best male friend, “blowing soapy scraps of bubble-juice diluted with manky Thames water on to the first commuters of the day”, quite catches at the heart She is kind, but wickedly funny. She’s not talking about the sex; she’s talking about the leg waxing. One hilarious diary entry, in which she takes home a potential boyfriend and accidentally reverts to full-on “Whore Mode”, leads her testily to remind herself: “Never have sex on a first date.” After a weary account of one of the more tedious aspects of her chosen career, she concludes: “This is not a complaint – it is a statement of fact on the condition of being female”.
“[I am] essentially straight,” she decides: “I’ll fuck women, but I don’t want to go home to one.” She could be almost any well-read single bloke in London.But Belle’s outlook is quintessentially female – and not only because she bitches about Julie Burchill and blows entire pay cheques on lingerie. She has the misanthropy of Larkin and examines the finer points of sexual technique as if she is adjusting the torque on a beloved but temperamental old E-type.She is fundamentally detached and focused about sex. Some even accused her of being a man.It’s true, Belle de Jour can write like a man – and not just in the peculiar way she salivates over curry and chips and “a pint of IPA on a sunny afternoon” She lists like Hornby She talks dirty like Amis. Her quick, northern turn of phrase was taken as a clue to her upbringing and education.
Her lonesome little portraits of strangers on the Tube, like photographs of moments in a life, were scrutinised in the hope of pinning down her whereabouts.Because she drops literary names and is obviously well-read, she was accused of being a highbrow novelist, slumming it on the quiet. Because her references are popular and modern, she was said to be a journalist attempting a smug hoax. When the literary detectives caught her bringing back embarrassing secrets from the sexual front line, it was assumed she was a dirty old scribbler in the Erotic Review mould. It appears possible that some former Kenya colonial officials will, even now, face criminal charges arising from the events of five decades ago.To ask why the shock (if it happens) will be in the early 21st century, not during the 1950s, is on some levels an evidently na? question – but on others genuinely intriguing.