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AROUND THE WORLD IN BOOKS / BRAZIL
The Brazilian Call Girl Who Blogged About Her Clients’ Sexual Abilities
A sex worker known as the “Little Surfer Girl” tried to hide her identity — then all hell broke loose
This is the second of 30 reviews of 30 books from 30 countries that are appearing on this page daily during the first 30 days of March, all in alphabetical order of the country names. Tomorrow: Canada.
Raquel Pacheco was an unknown teenager and high school dropout in Brazil until she took up sex work. Or, rather, until she started blogging about her clients’ sexual performance under the pseudonym Bruna Surfistinha (“Bruna the Little Surfer Girl”).
Then all hell broke loose — hell being a book contract, a movie deal, and global notoriety that led to write-ups in media like the New York Times.
“Yay! Finally someone invited me to a swingers’ club!!!”
The book became The Scorpion’s Sweet Venom: The Diary of a Brazilian Call Girl (Bloomsbury, 2010), a memoir translated by Alison Entrekin and based in part on Pacheco’s interviews with the actor and writer Jorge Tarquini. Its prose doesn’t exactly sizzle (though the movie version may have more…
