Roman Clodia's Reviews > Gigolo: Inside the Secret World of the Super Rich

Fact or fiction? Whichever, this is an unputdownable read as nice, married, father-of-three Ben Foster inadvertently falls into the life of a male 'escort' and sex worker.

The narrative voice is a compelling one and Ben is a nice guy: self-deprecating, charming without being insincere, and all-round good guy (apart from the fact that he's 'cheating' on his wife, of course!)

The more I read, the less I believed, though: for someone who portrays himself (or is portrayed by his ghost-writer... or should that be author?) as an innocent, naive, working-class lad with little education or savoir faire, not only is he self-reflective throughout this narrative, but he's also pretty spot-on in his analyses of class, economic disparities and social inequalities.

There are other points where it's hard to accept the story at surface value: that Ben has sex with around 2000 women in two years, including periods where he's servicing up to five women a day (he's in his thirties, and has what he describes as a physically tiring job as a masseur, as well as a family life - come on!); that his wife never really queries his sudden influx of designer suits, new cars, weekends away, even newly shaved genitals (and saying that they only have vanilla sex in the dark really doesn't explain the latter).

All the same, even if this is a fictionalised version of some underlying truth, I couldn't stop reading this book. It is explicit about the sex so beware if that offends you, and is a rivetting story of the rise and fall of a very modern male sex worker.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley