Rating: 
Summary: sexy with a capital X...
Review: i've never read a book so quickly in my life. i finished it just three days before my wedding...i was so completely enthralled not even my husband-to-be could tear me away. it was beautiful, sexy, intriguing. now that i'm looking for a new read, i'm having an impossible time finding one that i want to consume with as much fervor. oh, i recommend reading this with candles lit, shades drawn, a glass (or three) of wine and only when you have enough time on your hands to get completely lost...
Rating:
Summary: Stripping the Reader Bare
Review: 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?
Rating: 
Summary: Silly
Review: Maybe it was all the hype around the expose of Nikki Gemmell as the author, but I had expected this book to be much better.
I think the concept of the book was excellent, but Gemmell didn't appear to have the intelligence, erotic experience/imagination or skill as an author to deliver what could have been an intriguing book.
The plot is not fully rounded and the characters lack depth - both plot and characters have potential but it is never achieved.
A great book if you want an easy holiday read, but don't expect something confronting or groundbreaking - better to go for something like Hollywood Wives which doesn't pretend to be anything other than it is.
I think it would have also been cleverer if she had, at some point, either linked back to, or acknowledged, the source of the plagarised title (Brian Ferry Album).
My conclusion on reading book was just that it's silly. Nearly as silly as the staged 'discovery' of the author and her pointless disclaimer at the back.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: My first thoughts on this book was that it was a very accurate reflection on the way in which so many women repress their true nature to fit with what society finds acceptable, and to suit their partner. The main character is quite a distant figure at first in her marriage - repressed, supressed and compliant. After the 'betrayal' in her marriage, the affair that she embarks upon is an understandable response - finding out who she is without the labels she has had put upon her, and exploring her repressed sexuality. The problem I had with the book involved the infamous taxi driver chapters. These did not seem to me to fit with the rest of the book. I simply don't think that any woman would go from being repressed and making a huge leap (for this character) to have an affair to suddenly instigating the dangerous and overt act that she then embarks upon with the taxi drivers. She was not drugged, she was not drunk, it was the middle of the day, and I did not find that it fitted with the overall story or this character. It seemed to me that these chapters were out of place, and that they could have been inserted into the book later for shock value or to spice up an otherwise quiet book. The other thing that I simply didn't get was the characters response at the end of the book to motherhood. She treated having her baby as a prize, something to feel smug about, especially when her former best friend comes to visit and tells her that she can't have a baby herself. Despite the fact that the best friend is the cause of her marriage problems, and basically tells her that she is a troubled person, the main characters smugness and self satisfaction did not fit at all with the essence of who this character seemed to me throughout the book. The character had been such a giving person, I think that her journey of self discovery would have left her feeling sorry for the friend rather than smug. Basically, this book left me feeling quite icky, and if this is indeed what Nikki Gemmel feels about marriage, motherhood and sex, then good for her, but it is not a book that speaks to all women, and certainly not this one.
Rating:
Summary: Very special and rather erotic
Review: The story behind this book is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps it was a big beat-up to generate media hype. With the content of the book being so sexually explicit that publicity was sure to fire up the interest of the book reading public.
The book was written anonymously to allow the author complete freedom, honesty and openness in telling her story. It would also save embarrassment and hurt to those real life characters (spouse, lover, mother) so vividly described in the book. However, before the book was published, the identity of the author was ferreted out by a newspaper journalist. The publicity generated helped to push ?The Bride Stripped Bare? to the top of the best seller lists in several countries. Was it all a set up or was the author?s genuine intention to remain anonymous? Whilst it may have been vitally important to the author and those closest to her, it really doesn?t matter to the reader at all as this is an enthralling yarn.
The story is written in the first person by a young lady beginning with her honeymoon in Marrakech. It tells of her relationship with her husband Cole and her lover Gabriel who enters her life very soon after her wedding. The book is written in diary like style where thoughts as well as deeds are presented in beautiful flowing English. Her sexuality is clearly an enormous driving force, even destructive at times, and one wonders whether her fantasies could ever have exceeded the actual realities of her amazing sex life. The writing is both graphic and erotic throughout much of the book with not much being left to the imagination.
Her fluctuating relationships with both her mother and her best friend are weaved into the story as a linking thread and this works well. The final chapters of the tale describe her pregnancy and the child birth in clear and descriptive language that could only have been written by a lady who had gone through the whole child bearing process. It is not only the extreme physical pleasures and discomforts of bearing a child but the mental processes that go hand in hand with the physical that are so well written.
It is a great book and one that is probably best read quickly. Without giving away too much it doesn?t look as if there will be a sequel and that is a pity. 5 Stars.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting and Real
Review: The voice behind these "diary entries" could very well be your own. I was often startled at how the exact same thoughts written by the author were the same as many of my own. I feel that the realness of marriage, the fantasy of an affair and the internal struggle of being yourself and being who people want you to be are beautifully portrayed in the authors voice. This book won't leave your memory for quite a long time, and after reading it, you'll look at other women quite differently; perhaps we're not all so different...
Rating:
Summary: A contemporary classic
Review: This is a book that's destined to become a classic of feminine fiction alongside Marguerite Duras' "The Lover" and Elizabeth Smart's "By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept." Why? All of them share a love of language, a rigorous respect for the truth, and clear-eyed view of the complexities of womanhood and love. They're all intensely passionate and "The Bride Stripped Bare" is a thriller as well, which keeps the reader (this reader at least) guessing until the last page. And beyond it! I was seduced by the beauty of the writing, the book's wit and eroticism, and it's amazing honesty. It's one of those reads where every line counts. I also loved the texts it alludes to, a boldly sexual sixteenth century handbook for women and some Victorian manuals for housewives. You can tell the author's had a lot of fun writing this. Get me to the London Library! The Bride Stripped Bare is a facinating read that's hard to categorise...is it fiction or non-fiction, declaration, crie-de-couer, instruction manual?? I don't really know. A bit of everything I think and all the richer for it. It's a unique genre in female writing, unlike anything I've read before...a haunting classic.
Rating:
Summary: A bizarre foray into the mind of one married woman ...
Review: This simply-written, frank book allows us into the hidden thoughts of one woman, laying bare a secret life that those closest to her would never imagine she leads.
The plot is not original, daring or even erotic, and some key characters are unconvincing. Still, the author uses clever stylistic devices to weave in realism and drama - she writes anonymously, uses a second-person view point, and adds a twist in the peripheral plot where the anonymous author is reported to disappear (the press smoked out the real author eventually).
Although disappointing, it is enjoyable as a quirky exploration of the contradictions in married life.
Rating: 
Summary: Navel Gazing going horribly wrong
Review: Women and women writers seem to stare into the infinite complexities of life, love and sex more than men, it's a given, and sometimes it can be inspiring and strengthening.
But when one comes out with a novel that's as insipid and narcissistic as this, it's a tragedy. If Prozac Nation wasn't enough encouragement to let books gather dust, then Ms Gemmell (who released the book as Anon) gives a book that deserves little more than a place on the jumble sale table with its pure violin-playing sob story of a woman exploring her sexuality. By that I mean, bring on the orchestra as a repressed housewife gives up on her husband for a fling with a man who is a bit repressed himself.
The plot is thinner than the heroine's knickers and runs thus forth - marriage to a flake, thinks he's banging her best friend, has an affair with a virgin bloke, gets pregnant by hubby, goes to hubby and flicks the fling, gets mad because the fling hangs around, has baby. Yawn.
To be honest, if I had met this woman and she had told me her experiences, I would have hit her over the head with a skillet. Such is the venom that this book created for me. The writing is weak and unimaginative, the sex scenes grotty and gritty in equal measures but quite unerotic, the experiences hackneyed and tired.
This is going to be a book that you either worship or burn. Frankly, there are a ton of more interesting 'female experience' books out there. You want sex, go for Naomi Wolf; melodrama, go for The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood; and if it's ludicrous plots that float your boat, go hell for leather and get the Jackie Collin's 'Lucky' series. A parade of stronger women in writing you will be sure not to find! As for writing as 'Anon' it was too perfectly hilarious as I wouldn't put my name to a piece of work as punchable as this either.
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