Positives from the book

For a Woman: challenge your thoughts, wants, desires, constraints.

For a Man: a little insight into what a woman thinks about, wants, desires and what boundaries she is capable of creating and destroying

This novel does not enlighten the reader on female sexuality (but sure as hell enlightens us on Nikki Gemmell's predilections - which, I have to say are clichéd examples of self absorption and navel gazing). This is yet another poorly written example of 'female as victim' fantasy with the main character inflicting masochistic intercourse scenarios upon herself with nameless, neutral strangers as self-punishment for marrying a heartless bastard.

I'd like some insights into the thing that is Woman, so I read it through. And over and over what came through is what this woman really wanted was power and control, but mostly control. I found the author's and/or narrator's view of marriage and commitment as twisted, dark, and fundamentally wrong. The premise of the narrators was that of someone so incredibly vain and selfish that it infected and adulterated her view of what a relationship or a marriage should be: collaborative on all issues and levels. Her oversimplified point of departure for her relationship with her husband was subservience, surrender, and resignation to stagnation. She chose this path for herself, accepted it, and then blamed her husband for the situation she had helped create. He became the oppressive beast, which so handily facilitated the breakaway with the so very horribly trite love affair.

Then the baby came and the immediate and undeniable bonds of service and sacrifice were no longer an issue. I read this carefully, but the same things that made her despise her husband so intensely were the ones that made her love her baby so much.

Ultimately, it all boiled down to control, control, and control. She loathed the sharing of control with her husband, which she manufactured into his non-existent total control. This gave her the manufactured reason she needed to do what she did. But the baby elicited no control struggle--by the end of the book I was wondering what kind of mother she would turn out to be, and how exactly that little baby would grow up, develop and mature. I feared more for the child than for the jilted husband.

Bottom line: Sure, get this and read it, it'll give you some insight, but hopefully not insight into every woman.

The Bride Stripped Bare purports to be the diary manuscript of an insecure, rather jaded, 30-something woman. The preface explains that the diary has been submitted for publication by the author's mother, the author herself having vanished under highly fishy circumstances. (Car found at the top of a cliff, body never recovered. Cops say suicide; Mum thinks she might have faked her own death). The story begins with the author's honeymoon in Marrakech, Morocco. She is happy, in love, blooming. But right from the start we know that all is not perfect. Hubbie is a decent and well-meaning sort of a fellow but he's selfish and inattentive, especially in the sack. Also, we suspect that he might be having an affair with the protagonist's best friend, Theo; a free-spirited sex-therapist who suffers from an unfortunate sexual condition (“Vaginismus”, if you're interested). Gradually, things get worse and the two grow more distant.

Eventually, our ever-nameless heroine meets Gabriel, a handsome - yet sensitive - Spanish boy. Gabriel is a semi-employed actor who we later find out is also a virgin. This has been bad news for Gabriel and a complete disaster for his girlfriends. But for our heroine it's perfect. She has been feeling neutered ever since her marriage, the loss of her career and her desultory sex life. She resolves to instruct him in the ways of woman. The two begin an affair.

Traditional gender roles are inverted and Gemmell uses Gabriel's vulnerability and sexual inexperience as a way of exploring well-worn themes of possession, control and female empowerment. “An idea, beautiful in its simplicity. To initiate Gabriel, to teach him exactly what you want. To create a pleasure man, purely that, the lover every woman dreams of. You'll be in control, for the very first time, you'll be able to dictate exactly what you want. And there'll be no expectation of how you should act.”

Pliant Gabriel opens a door of sexual liberation, and a series of erotic, Houellebecqean-style encounters ensue. There are taxi drivers, orgies, strangers, Gabriel, of course, and an increasingly confused hubby.

So why is it all so silly?

To begin with there's the pre-canned feel of the sexual fantasy: Sex with strangers? Fluffy-chested virgins? Dashing Mediterranean types who talk about their feelings? Please. This is stock-standard stuff for any chick over 30. See Catherine Millet, Germaine Greer and Shirley Valentine.

Then there's the writing. Gemmell has a funny prose style. “Sensuous”, is the way one reviewer described it, and I suppose in part it is. But it doesn't always work. Her practice is to dump long, flowery descriptions on the back of short, spare sentences that can't always bear their weight. The result is a string of breathy, overwrought sentences, which add little in the way of meaning. Thus, the weather is “unclenching” and the narrator feels “fat with content”. Evocative. But of what exactly?

The tone too, is irritating: Brooding, weepy and utterly inward-looking, as though no world exists beyond one's own emotional landscape. To be fair, this is no doubt what Gemmell had in mind - to tell the story of a woman's inner life. But she delves too deep. In the end, the narrator stands guilty of the same adolescent self-absorption that she has supposedly been railing against.

The Bride Stripped Bare may well be the hottest thing in chick lit since Emily Bronte bashed out Wuthering Heights. I'm too boofy to know. But to me it reads like a stern warning to every man who's ever forgotten to put down the toilet seat or switched on the news while his wife was telling him about her day. Indeed, this impression is confirmed by the vaguely menacing dedication that prefaces the book: “For my husband. For every husband.” Gulp. Sleep with one eye open, Mr Gemmell. And if I haven't heard from you by ten, I'm calling the cops.