Reviewed by Joseph O’Connell
Elis – Irish Call Girl
by Anna Rajmon
Amazon Publishing Portal
June 2024, 298 pages, ISBN-13: 979-8990794764
Elis – Irish Call Girl was a surprise. It is the tale of a former sex worker’s experiences in the frightful prostitution scene which Ireland plays host to, and which few seem to be fully aware of. This bleak description doesn’t make the book sound like it would be an enjoyable one to read, but it is – and full marks to Anna Rajmon, the astute author of this sparkling memoir, for making it so.
Rajmon, a young single mother from the Czech Republic, found herself in debt and with a family to support. With no other options, she felt compelled to enter the murky world of prostitution in her home country and in Ireland (in both the Republic and in the North). Like most who enter this world, she reached out to those established in the trade to get herself through the door, and applied to an agency which employs sex workers that are sent to Ireland, traveling the length and breadth of the island to provide ‘sexual services’ for ‘clients.’ Heartwarmingly, Rajmon could find it in herself to write this:
Ireland is an amazing country with beautiful places that soften your heart. I fell in love with Ireland back then, and my love for this charming country, despite all the bad things that happened to me there, has lasted until today.
That passage is all the more remarkable in context, for Rajmon’s time in Ireland – which was dated from February 2020 to August 2023 – was not a pleasant one, to put it mildly. The hatred and disgust that she expresses for prostitution is born of her unpleasant first-hand experiences, which she recounts in her book in explicit detail and with reference to records which she kept (and which journalist Ann Murphy could verify in an August 2024 feature she wrote on Rajmon for the Irish Examiner).
The agency coerced Rajmon into accepting an endless queue of clients, and Rajmon was given no option in terms of accepting it. Even when she was physically or sexually assaulted, which was often, she had to keep working.
Rajmon is careful and detailed in how she describes her meetings with clients – some treated her well, some physically repulsed her owing to their hygiene or manners, and some were simply vile and brutal in how they treated her. There is overlap in these categories, of course, but Rajmon is too intelligent and too nuanced a writer to simply conflate them.
Nevertheless, the overall experience was harrowing for this young woman, to the point where she became susceptible to suicidal ideation. Only her deep love for her family – particularly her young daughter – kept her going, and the inner strength which she drew upon to tolerate this situation will win your admiration. The fact that she was doing all of this for her family was all she could cling to, and the lengths she went to for them can only win your respect.
Also admirable is just how open Anna Rajmon is in recounting her experience – her fierce honesty, conveyed with a raw emotion, grips you from the beginning and keeps you turning the page. It helps that Rajmon is an exceptional writer. Her writing is clear, direct, and sparkles with sarcasm and humor. That she is able to mine such unpleasant experiences for laughter – albeit dark laughter – tells you just how strong she truly is.
Elis – Irish Call Girl also benefits from Rajmon’s artistic talents – she has stated in her social media that she personally designed the book cover, and the book itself is studded with a number of cartoons which help provide visual illustrations of various situations and emotions that she experienced.
Rajmon is as sharp and thoughtful as she is hilarious – in telling her story, she misses nothing regarding her experience. The picture she paints of the Irish prostitution scene is a comprehensive and complex one – from how accommodation is obtained, to how advertising is organized, to how meetings are arranged, to how travel from location to location is organized, to the power dynamics between sex workers, ‘clients’ and ‘agencies’ (‘pimps’ would be a more accurate term) – Rajmon lays it all out in black-and-white.
What Anna Rajmon has to say about prostitution isn’t confined to Ireland and the Czech Republic – you cannot honestly read Elis – Irish Call Girl and claim to be ignorant of what sex work is really all about, or the toll that it takes on the sex workers themselves. The problems that she highlights are ones which are “deeply embedded in the sex trade itself,” as she put it herself in a recent interview with Global Comment.
Rajmon got out of prostitution, but she is open about the toll it took on her. The book can be seen as a way of confronting the horrors she encountered as a means of putting them to bed. Rajmon herself states that her explicit intent with the book is to make other young women aware of what sex work entails. Young women who could find themselves in the same situation she found herself in, and may have as many options as she had before she entered prostitution.
They should read it, certainly, but so should we all. We all have female friends and relatives – sisters, daughters, mothers, cousins, aunts, nieces – who could find themselves in financial difficulties, and have few options for solving that problem. Prostitution is one possible option that they may have no choice but to consider – Rajmon’s wish is that they reconsider, and after reading Elis – Irish Call Girl, it would be hard to disagree with her.
The sincerity of Rajmon’s account leaves no room for doubt. She no longer works in prostitution, and she has no vested interest in dressing up her story – in fact, she is as brutally honest about her own missteps as she is about those who she had dealings with. So if you only ever read one book about prostitution, make it this one. Elis – Irish Call Girl is sharp, funny, honest, articulate and insightful, and you will learn a great deal from it.
About the reviewer: Joseph O’Connell is a budding freelance writer with a preference for unconventional works of non-fiction.