The Bride Stripped Bare

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The Bride Stripped Bare

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Overview

For fans of Fifty Shades of Grey ¿ the international bestseller ¿ an explosive novel of sex, secrecy and escape.`You¿ve never been in control, until now; you¿ve never, before, had exactly what you want¿The lights turned off. A touch that¿s gentle, slow, provocative, that builds you up, that makes you want it too much¿¿Imagine on honeymoon, lulled by sultry heat and the promise of a lifetime¿s happiness, you discover a shocking secret about your husband. But instead of destroying you, the knowledge brings freedom; the freedom to bare your soul, explore your deepest desires and discover what you really want.THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE is the story of a passionate sexual awakening, as erotic as it is dangerous¿

Editorial Reviews

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. (Mar.) Forecast: Gallons of ink have been spilled overseas about this one-most of it on the question of the author's anonymity (she's gone public there-or has been outed, depending on whom one asks). But there's little here that's shocking enough to justify the secrecy, so it's hard to imagine that there will be quite the same buzz stateside. The sex is explicit, but still rather tasteful. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

English-Australian Gemmell (Alice Springs, 1999, etc.) pens a strangely unnerving fourth novel in the second person, published anonymously in England last year, about the sexual tribulations of a bourgeois wife grasping for gratification within marriage and without. A journalism professor at the University of London marries in her mid-30s and quits her job at the urging of new husband, international art restorer Cole, to become a full-time wife. Months later, on a delayed honeymoon in Marrakech, she overhears Cole on the phone with her best friend, Theo, and decides the two must be having an affair-thus beginning her path of crushing emotional revenge in the form of frigid withdrawal and, eventually, full-blown sensuous enlightenment with Gabriel, a Spanish-English virgin actor. Little by little, addressing herself and the reader as "You," the unnamed narrator reveals some of her shockingly repressed secrets: she can't stand her husband in bed, and she's never, never had an orgasm. She wants to love her husband for his steady ability to provide, yet she gets enormous erotic charge by initiating Gabriel into her wildest secret desires. Her salvation, she decides, will come through writing a book, inspired by a medieval family heirloom called A Woemans Worth, written anonymously and espousing the substitution of a more able man in the place of an inadequate husband. The narrator finds new purpose both in marriage and affair by haunting the London Library for research and rendezvousing with Gabriel once a week. But when it comes time to make the right choice, will she return to the husband she doesn't love, ensuring a lifetime of devastation? The story is fashioned as something between adiary and a sexual primer, chock-full of women's feelings about sex and sexual fantasies of all sorts. Though already used to baring their souls on TV, American women might still cleave to Gemmell's stuttering earnestness. Proof that the feminist movement has brought women barely out of the Dark Ages.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170241965
Publisher:	HarperCollins UK
Publication date:	02/28/2013
Edition description:	Unabridged

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Read an Excerpt

The Bride Stripped Bare
A Novel

Lesson 1

Honesty is of the utmost importance

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.

Lesson 2

Cold water stimulates, strengthens and braces the nerves

A honeymoon. A foreign land.

There you are, succumbing to the sexual ritual and remembering the day as a seven-year-old when you discovered water. You'd never been in a swimming pool before; there were none where you were growing up. You're remembering a summer holiday and a swimming pool with the water inching up your belly as you stepped forward gingerly and the slow creep of the cold and the breath collected in the knot of your stomach and your mother always there ahead of you, smiling and coaxing and holding out her hands and stepping back and back. Then suddenly, pop, you're floating and the water's holding your belly and legs like sinews of rope, it's muscular and balming and silky and the memory's as potent as a first kiss.

As for the first time you fucked, well, you remember the sound, as his fingers readied you between your legs, not much else. Not even a name now.

Lesson 3

Making a comfortable bed is a very important part of household work

In the night air of Marrakech, on your belated honeymoon, the first scrum of morning birds sounds like fat spitting and crackling in a kitchen. It's still dark but the birds have taken over from the frogs as crisply as if a conductor's lowered his baton. The call to prayer has pulled you awake and you can't fall back into sleep, you want to fling the french doors wide, as wide as they'll go, and inhale the strange desert dawn. But your husband, Cole, will wake and complain if you do.

So. You lay your hand on the jut of his hip and breathe in his sleeping, the sour, sweet smell of it, and smile softly in the dark. The tip of your nose nuzzles his scent on the back of his neck.

You've never loved anyone more in your life.

You slip on to the balcony. It's hot, 82 degrees at least. A wondrous child-smile greets a great spill of stars, for the vast orange glow from London's lights means you never see stars at home, scarcely know when there's a full moon. The night flowers exhale their bloom, bougainvillaea and hibiscus and magnolia are still and shadowy in the night. You feel fat with content. Cole calls out, plaintive, and you slip back inside and his arm wings your body and clamps you tight.

Your feet maneuver free of the sheet's smother and dangle off the edge of the bed, as they always do, finding the coolness and the air.

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Editorial Reviews

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. (Mar.) Forecast: Gallons of ink have been spilled overseas about this one-most of it on the question of the author's anonymity (she's gone public there-or has been outed, depending on whom one asks). But there's little here that's shocking enough to justify the secrecy, so it's hard to imagine that there will be quite the same buzz stateside. The sex is explicit, but still rather tasteful. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

English-Australian Gemmell (Alice Springs, 1999, etc.) pens a strangely unnerving fourth novel in the second person, published anonymously in England last year, about the sexual tribulations of a bourgeois wife grasping for gratification within marriage and without. A journalism professor at the University of London marries in her mid-30s and quits her job at the urging of new husband, international art restorer Cole, to become a full-time wife. Months later, on a delayed honeymoon in Marrakech, she overhears Cole on the phone with her best friend, Theo, and decides the two must be having an affair-thus beginning her path of crushing emotional revenge in the form of frigid withdrawal and, eventually, full-blown sensuous enlightenment with Gabriel, a Spanish-English virgin actor. Little by little, addressing herself and the reader as "You," the unnamed narrator reveals some of her shockingly repressed secrets: she can't stand her husband in bed, and she's never, never had an orgasm. She wants to love her husband for his steady ability to provide, yet she gets enormous erotic charge by initiating Gabriel into her wildest secret desires. Her salvation, she decides, will come through writing a book, inspired by a medieval family heirloom called A Woemans Worth, written anonymously and espousing the substitution of a more able man in the place of an inadequate husband. The narrator finds new purpose both in marriage and affair by haunting the London Library for research and rendezvousing with Gabriel once a week. But when it comes time to make the right choice, will she return to the husband she doesn't love, ensuring a lifetime of devastation? The story is fashioned as something between adiary and a sexual primer, chock-full of women's feelings about sex and sexual fantasies of all sorts. Though already used to baring their souls on TV, American women might still cleave to Gemmell's stuttering earnestness. Proof that the feminist movement has brought women barely out of the Dark Ages.

Kirkus Reviews