Review: Some Girls: My Life in a Harem

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I first heard Jillian speak on an episode of The Moth, on NPR. Her story - that of being a theater school dropout who interviews with a "casting director" for what turns out to be a gig "entertaining" the younger brother of the Sultan of Brunei - caught my attention.

It was the People Magazine-reading part of me that thought this would be an appealing story, and it was satiated at that level of quality. This was a fun read, a quick read, but not a high quality Jeannette-Walls read. I liked reading about her time with the other women in Borneo, and I was fascinated by her relationship with the Sultan and his brother. And I'll admit, I was more than a little curious reading about a harem and its goings-on.

But I didn't find the book uplifting, or the author particularly likable. She comes across as victimized but really made a lot of choices at a lot of junctures to get her where she ended up. Her brief forays into her personal life growing up and as a young adult didn't change my mind about her either, and seemed kind of choppy in the narrative.



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