Bride Stripped Bare [Hardcover]

Anonymous (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 7, 2003

This novel of sex, secrecy, and escape by an anonymous writer begins with a missing woman; her car lies abandoned on a remote bluff but no body is found. She was the good wife and mother: mannerly, quiet, and self-contained. But she has left behind an incendiary diary chronicling a disturbing journey of sexual awakening. As the diary opens on her honeymoon in Morocco, she believes herself to be happy . Swiftly, however, this smooth surface is ruptured as an act of massive betrayal propels her into a world of desire, fantasy and recklessness. What begins for her in the imagination ends in a downward spiral of obsession and release. The protagonist finds an unlikely heroine to inspire her in a dusty, rare manuscript written by an anonymous woman in the 1600s, a cry from the heart for women to live and love freely. With this as her guide, she dares to challenge convention as she learns the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is, how long can her soul sustain a perilous double life? Coolly impassioned, "The Bride Stripped Bare" explores the truth about love and sex. Couched in a deceptively simple style, it will make you question whether it is ever entirely possible to know another person.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A series of diary entries charts the sinuous paths of marriage and sexual desire in this artful book, a bestseller in the U.K. The author of the entries, a nameless 30-something housewife, has disappeared, leaving behind what amounts to 138 "lessons," written in the second-person, for her fellow archetypal "good wives." At first, the gimmick is jarring, but as the protagonist's personality emerges and flowers, readers will be seduced by this sometimes subtle, sometimes overwrought novel set in modern-day London. At first, marriage equals safety to the woman ("it's a relief, to be honest, this surrendering..."), but the sex is humdrum, and Cole, her husband, is remote and fastidious—only oral sex offers a surefire way to orgasm and sometimes he'd just rather watch TV. To make matters worse, he may have engaged in an affair with her best childhood friend. Beginning work on her long-planned book might cheer her up—and so will an affair with lovely Gabriel, of the "cathedral-wide" chest and silky young skin. Thus she commences erotic adventures previously unimaginable. She also becomes pregnant, and the anonymous author is cannily perceptive about the vicissitudes of pregnancy and new motherhood; she writes strikingly of the surprising erotic passion, emotional upheaval and anger that can flare during pregnancy. This unusual but strangely compelling novel offers an intimate chronicle of change and self-discovery, of a woman who makes a final and unexpected choice.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

The problem with pornography is not that it exploits or degrades, but that if you are remotely interested in it there is so much about that it can absorb every moment of every waking hour, plus some when you are not awake. As a delivery medium for pornography, the printed book lacks the impact of the Internet, and must rely for its appeal not on explicitness but literary value. Part of the sales pitch for this book is that the female author has two novels to her name, which is a secret. Like all sex books this one is conventional, being an account of sexual awakening and self-discovery. As usual with pornography what is particularly exciting is what is not shown or said. In this case the identity of 'Anonymous'.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Fourth Estate (July 7, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007163533
• ISBN-13: 978-0007163533
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,156,408 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Provocative and Disturbing - A Must-Read!, August 17, 2007

By 

Colleen S. Harris "Warmaiden" (Chattanooga, TN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bride Stripped Bare: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)

A gem, for any of you folks who haven't seen it on the Target shelves yet: Nikki Gemell's The Bride Stripped Bare.

Written in Lessons instead of chapters, the novel begins with, "Your husband doesn't know you're writing this. It's quite easy to write it under his nose. Just as easy, perhaps, as sleeping with other people. But no one will ever know who you are, or what you've done, for you've always been seen as the good wife." From there, Gemmell takes us on a journey through a woman's erotic and frightening self-discovery. The narrator moves from boring housewife to experimental secret-keeper upon the discovery of an Elizabethan manuscript that describes women's secret desires. Intrigued that another woman so far removed had felt the same urges and longings, the narrator careens through testing the limits of marriage, dragging the reader through the rabbit hole with her into a world where a bored, naive housewife quickly learns to weave lies and deceit to manipulate those around her.

Fans of poetry, you're in luck - the rich imagery and gorgeous use of language melts on your mental tongue as you read, and though many of the sentences are short, they're rich - I have to admit a tendency to blow through books and then have to go back to read for digestion. This novel, however, had me gasping with exhaustion at the end of every few chapters - it's gut wrenching, in a subversive, disquieting way. The second person voice "you" this, "you" that - the narrative voice intimately involves the reader, turns the reader into a shadowy accomplice during the length of the book. Does each of us have the capacity to blur the boundaries between fantasy and reality, and are we willing to pay the price that comes with it?

The way Gemmell captures what a woman thinks when she's got the semi-ideal life but dark yearnings makes this one a must-read for anyone interested in the workings of the mind of a woman. Note that the Amazon reviews I've seen so far have hated the book - but I do believe they came from the wrong perspective. I don't believe it is intended as a heartbreaking take of a good wife; the sex scenes were not meant to throw the book into the 'erotica' cache of reading, and it is not intended to be a novel addressing what EVERY woman wants, desires, and is willing to do - it's more about the boundaries one woman chooses to cross, and what it does to her as a person. Whether you like or dislike the narrator is almost immaterial - the journey is the thing.

Caveat - sexually explicit, unapologetically erotic, and searing honesty characterize Gemmell's work in this one. While many women will report that they have had none of the darker wanderings of the mind that characterize the novel, from conversations with close friends and my own experiences, enough of us have to make this one a very worthwhile read. Highly recommended with maximum starrage - if you're not afraid to read a novel with a provocative cover that only hints at the turmoil and emotionally disturbing text, this one is a must-read. A must re-read. A must-share-with-my-best-friend-and-a-few-men-I-know read.

Gemmell is now on my list, and I'll have to go grab her other work - The Bride Stripped Bare is beyond fantastic - it's disturbingly real. Let me know what you think of it!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good book but not revelatory, April 26, 2004

By 

A. J. Ocallaghan "Andy O'Callaghan" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bride Stripped Bare: A Novel (Hardcover)

I have very mixed opinions about this book. As a story, I enjoyed it: the prose is often excellent, the voice and internal life of the heroine is well done. The framework of the story is intriguing and made me eager to finish it, although the ending isn't so much an ending as a stopping.

Against that, there's a great deal of artificiality. The relentless use of the second person grates. The cardboard cut-out characters of the dull-as-dishwater husband and the impossibly perfect, hunky but virginal, paramour are unrealistic and lack life.

But that should be OK, because this is a novel in form only. Actually, it's an exposition of women's attitudes to sex and their secret feelings and desires. The real purpose of the book is to lay out and discuss these hitherto unknown areas of human life.

But it doesn't and this is where the book spectacularly fails.

The sexual revelations aren't revelatory: who doesn't know nowadays that often marriages lose their sexual passion after a time, that many women don't enjoy performing oral sex or that someone can have a secret life that is at odds with their external persona? Women masturbate and enjoy it. Gasp! Couples can experiment to enhance their sex lives. No, really!?

One of the most difficult aspects of the book is its claim to speak for all women, which is inaccurate and a little offensive. This self-important attitude is present on every page: the fact that it's dedicated to "every husband"; the continual use of the second person; the anonymity of the author (which actually seems to have more to do with marketing than any other consideration). The extreme inability to speak about sex that characterises the protagonist (and, by extension, the author) just doesn't describe most women I know. While many of the problems and concerns the book describes will I'm sure be familiar to female readers, it completely ignores the fact that this is well-trodden ground nowadays. There's been a continual conversation going on since the 60's about women's role in and marriage, their frustrations with men and society and the necessity of reshaping the lives of women to reflect their sexuality. None of this is evident in the book at all.

The treatment of sex is very Cosmo and the fact that you can find a much more frank discussion of female sexuality on TV in the form of Sex And The City indicates that the book falls way short of its intentions. Surely literature should be more challenging and subversive than mainstream TV? I thought this may have been something to do with age, that the book is aimed at older women than my peers but knowing that Nikki Gemmell is only 36 makes this extremely perplexing.

As I say, as a story about a woman and her particular marriage and her particular responses, this is a good book. And if it had been published in the 60's, 70's or even 80's then I can see how it could have been shocking and revelatory. But evn though many of the problems and concerns it treats with are real for many women, this book fails to encompass the real complexity of these issues in the modern world. It isn't frank enough. It tells you little you don't already know. It presents black and white, unsatisfying caricatures of the men involved, which mean that the issues aren't explored in sufficient depth and detail. Overall the book falls abysmally short of the sort of impact it's trying to have and which it rather smugly assumes it does have.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stripping the Reader Bare, December 12, 2004

By 

Jennifer M (DeKalb, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bride Stripped Bare: A Novel (Hardcover)

If you're American, you may have a little trouble finding it. Thus far, the publisher has only distributed it in London and Sydney. But The Bride Stripped Bare by Nikki Gemmel (published anonymously by 4th Estate in 2003) is surprisingly worth the hunt.

The story jetes off the premise that the anonymous diarist's mother found the text after her daughter and grandson disappeared under mysterious circumstances, leaving only their car at the top of a cliff. Their bodies were never found. From there follows the inner secrets of the ostensibly perfect housewife - from her Marrakech honeymoon to her illicit Sevillian affair and her descent into a sexual awakening at the hands of strangers.

The book closes with an open letter from Gemmel explaining that she intended the book to be published without any connection to her due to "personal reasons". She quickly adds that the story is not autobiographical and berates the media for sniffing her out and "forcing" her to put her name to it. One would think the paparazzi had taken great interest in slapping her face on the cover of every tabloid. Given that without this tangential letter most readers would not associate the book with Gemmel, a cynic would wonder if this was all a marketing stunt.

Gemmel takes some fabulous stylistic risks - most notably in writing the entire diary in the second person. The effect is, at worst, a psychological distance created between the reader and the anonymous narrator that reflects the narrator's own internal separation from herself. She doesn't know who she is and, despite reading the most intimate thoughts in her head, neither do we. At best, when the ideas hit home, when they reflect something in the reader's own life or with which she can identify, the second person style gives the eerie sensation that the diarist is reading her interloper's mind. Not only is the anonymous bride stripped bare, but her reader as well.

Each chapter - dubbed "lessons" in the text - begins with a pithy quote from Household Science: Readings in Necessary Knowledge for Women by the Reverend JP Faunthorpe or A Woman's Words to Women on the Care of Their Health in England and India by Mary Scharlieb. These little dictums for women's lives include "making

a comfortable bed is a very important part of household work" and "girls can never be too thoughtful". As might be expected, the content of each quote loosely corresponds to the content of the ensuing chapter with a gruesome, if cliched, irony.

In fact, very little about this book is NOT cliche and, surprisingly, it works in spite of this. It tells a story that certainly wouldn't shock the reading public unless it had been published a good sixty years ago. When Lady Chatterley's Lover was first published by DH Lawrence in 1928, a woman's sexual secrets were uniquely titillating, but Gemmel's playing to a much more jaded readership these days. Even every possible feminist angle on the story has been done to death - unfulfilled housewife....trying to find herself...has a sexual awakening... *yawn*

The reader is left with many unanswered questions, not the least of which is why this anonymous woman chooses infidelity in a seedy sexual underground. Her husband holds no particular allure for her, but is, by her own account, attentive and kind. If he doesn't understand her, there's little indication that he's a cad. She suspects him of having an affair and he doesn't want her to work outside the home, but seems no more controlling or callous than the average person - which may have been Gemmel's point. Perhaps the narrator is simply bored. She has found the husband and baby to which so many women aspire and now she is looking down the long descent into dailiness and apathy and is looking for something to once again quicken her sense of vitality.

For whatever reason, the tension builds over the question of whether and how long the narrator can keep her secret life a secret. This book is so readable because it functions almost as a psychological deconstruction of its central character and leaves us asking how well we know the people close to us. For that matter, how well do we know ourselves?