Synopses & Reviews
A woman disappears, leaving behind an incendiary diary chronicling a journey of sexual awakening. To all who knew her, she was the good wife: happy, devoted, content. But the diary reveals a secret self, one who's discovered that her new marriage contains mysteries of its own. She has discovered a forgotten Elizabethan manuscript that dares to speak of what women truly desire, and inspired by its revelations, she tastes for the first time the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is: How long can she sustain a perilous double life?
Review
"Simply too beautiful...a mesmerizing and disquieting novel that will deserve to be read again." Vogue Australia
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"One of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time." Time Out New York
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"Wonderfully sensuous...witty in its construction...a subtle portrait of a modern marriage." Independent
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"Superbly executed: suspense, psychodrama, anger, tenderness and terror mingle with the restlessness of a vast , overpowering landscape." London Times Literary Supplement
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"A powerful novel that does not flinch from strong emotion or description...luminous." London Times
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"A jazzy, nonlinear...narrative style as compelling and exotic as the landscape itself." Baltimore Sun
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"Unremitting, elegant and dark. I believe every woman should get married at least once, and read this novel twice." Suzanne Finnamore, author of Otherwise Engaged
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"An erotically charged tale of tragic yearning, The Bride Stripped Bare lingers in memory like one of those heart-stopping dreams filled with eerily familiar strangers." Boston Herald
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"A willfully titillating....Like an artful striptease, The Bride Stripped Bare ensnares us with its rawness..." San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis
THE RUNAWAY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
"The Bride Stripped Bare shows us the inside-out of marriage, infidelity, obsession and taxi drivers (I may never take a cab ride in London again). . . . Few books can be both dark and light. This one dances on the edge, and sometimes crosses it, with much satisfaction to be had on either side."-- Valerie Frankel, author of The Accidental Virgin
An explosive novel of sex, secrecy, and escape.
A woman disappears. Her car lies abandoned on a remote bluff; no body is found. Known by her family and friends as quiet and self-contained, she has left behind an incendiary diary chronicling a disturbing journey of sexual awakening.
The diary opens on her honeymoon in Morocco: she believes herself to be happy--or happy enough, anyway. Swiftly, this security masquerading as love fractures in an act of massive betrayal, only to propel her into a world of desire and fantasy and recklessness. In need of guidance, she finds an unlikely heroine in the anonymous author of a dusty, rare manuscript. Written by a woman in the 1600s, it is a cry from the heart for women to live and love freely. Emboldened, she allows herself to discover 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, Bride Stripped Bare tells shocking truths about love and sex. Couched in a deceptively simple style, its gorgeous, incantatory rhythms will make you question whether it is ever entirely possible to know another person.
About the Author
Nikki Gemmell is the internationally bestselling author of The Bride Stripped Bare and With My Body, as well as Shiver, Alice Springs, and The Book of Rapture. She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her family.