The Bride Stripped Bare (2003)

This is an ambitious and affecting novel and I don't know how I missed all the hype about it when it first came out. Normally I find novels written in the 2nd person a bit too much like hard work, but Gemmell really makes her own. Although it was billed as a daring piece of erotica when it was first released, oh how quickly fashions change. I suspect it might disappoint readers of the current trends in 'erotica' who are used to getting a shag-fix every 1500 words. There's a lot more going on here than just sex as Gemmell takes us through the tribulations and triumphs of a young marriage. Personally, I didn't think the framing device was necessary, but that's just my vote. By the time I got to the end, I was thinking I would look for something else by this author, and low, there was a sample of her latest book handily presented on my Kindle edition of the Bride...It's called With My Body. I read this, but it felt altogether too samey in tone, style and content. So I'm not saying never, but not for now at any rate.

Update: 10th November 2012.

I was quite surprised to see this in the Daily Mail's list of 30 most titillating books of all time today. Especially so far up the list, as the sexual content struck me as quite limited in terms of actually percentage of words in the novel. A bit like a crime novel where someone rings the heroine up for a quick chat in chapter fiteen and mentions they heard about a murder, and then nine chapters later she reads in the paper that no one bothered to ever investigate it and she wonders for a paragraph or two is this is the same case as whats-her-name mentioned, but then the doorbell rings and she gets on with the rest of her life.
( )

meh! Kate Millet did it better. ( )

What first stung of simple poetic beauty and the promise of some long-supressed truth on marriage and what it means to be a woman too quickly drew out into a predictable novel that, for me, was nothing beyond either fiction or average. I was disappointed, in the end. I felt it could've been so much more.

The writing style of this book is very different, I'd call it Second Person Singular. I found it off-putting, it reminded me of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, although I personally wouldn't have chosen any of her adventures!
The story seemed contrived and unbelievable - I expected that in the end it would be revealed that her encounters took place only in her imagination.
It's not the best erotica I've read, some of the scenarios are downright boring, others I found repulsive. I guess I just don't share the belief that degradation leads to empowerment. ( )

Supposedly anonymous memoir or diary of a woman who wants more sex than her husband -- and you wonder why she married him, and why he doesn't leave her. Yukky. ( )