With My Body (36 page)

Authors: Nikki Gemmell

BOOK: With My Body

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The Bride Stripped Bare
was written under the name Anonymous. Were you much more comfortable with the sexual nature of the book this time around?

Virginia Woolf describes anonymity as a refuge for female writers, and it certainly was for me during the writing of
Bride
. For a long time there it felt like my life was one huge flinch in reaction to the flurry surrounding the book. I still don’t know who outed me to the press, and it was hugely traumatic to lose control of that book and my professional life. I vowed I’d never write another book like it, but then gradually I moved on, buoyed by the heart-lifting reaction to the intense honesty of the book. Almost a decade later I feel like a different person. More mature and more confident, and with that has come a loosening. I’m no longer bound by what people think. I have a voice. Perhaps that’s the inevitable letting-go that comes with middle age, particularly as a woman enters the age of invisibility. It can be an extraordinarily playful and freeing time. Personally I feel like I’m becoming lighter as I age, reveling in the sheer wonder of life and everything around me. In terms of sex it’s like
my God, that our bodies can do that—
still
do that
!

Your book is extremely honest when it comes to sex, but do you think many people are—to their partners, their friends? Or is there this idea of what sex should be that people tend to conform to or are embarrassed to go against? Do you think there is more honesty in talking about sex now, or is it informed by what people read in
Cosmo
or draw from characters like Samantha Jones from
Sex and the City
?

What relationship can survive the shock of absolute candor? Gabriel Garcia Márquez said every person has three lives: a personal life, a private life, and a secret life, and it’s the secret one I’m fascinated by. The raw underbelly of our sexuality in all its ugliness and vulnerability, and all its beauty, too. It’s rare to reveal to a sexual partner the core of your secret self. I’m intrigued by that. How far we can go in terms of candor—and if we really want to. There’s something so visceral about
female sexuality, and I think a lot of men have little idea of the depth and complexity of it.

What are the most honest interpretations/accounts of sexuality you have seen in film or read in books?

The French writer Houellebecq is the standard bearer for me. His novel
Atomised
, for its shocking honesty, delicious grubbiness, vulnerability, and courage. In terms of films, Jane Campion’s
In the Cut
was extremely brave and honest; and at the other end of the scale there was a lot of honesty in that deliciously funny opening of
Bridesmaids
.

The Victorian book that you draw the quotes from is sometimes strangely spot-on in its sentiment. Tell us a little about how you found this book, and if you think any of this wisdom still applies. Why did you choose to use this lesson format again in
With My Body
?

As with
The Bride Stripped Bare
I went back to my deeply eccentric London library, in St. James Square, in search of dusty old tomes on womanhood. I found a fabulous little advice manual for young women heading out to the colonies. It was a Victorian how-to manual on everything from pleasing a husband to dealing with other women to raising children. Its tone was so sparky, brisk, matter-of-fact, and very wise. It was intriguingly anonymous, but you just knew that the author was a shrewd—and warm—observer who’d lived a rich and complicated life, an older woman trying to steer younger ones through the precarious choppy waters of early adulthood. There are life lessons in it that are still shockingly pertinent today.

Bride
and
With My Body
are in part inspired by the writings of Colette, Anaïs Nin, and Marguerite Duras. What are the qualities of these writers that have influenced your work?

Their unflinching take on womanhood, in all its complexity—the richness of sexuality, relationships, female competitiveness, motherhood.

The memories of the main character’s sexual awakening as a teenager triggers a new phase in her current married relationship—even though it has been pretty ho-hum in the bedroom for a while. One of the things that you usually can’t have again in a long-term relationship is the joy of discovery of a new lover and the excitement and novelty that can bring, but you seem to provide hope that, even after years of marriage, you can take things to a new level and rediscover each other.

The book is a manifesto, as much as anything, about how to unlock a woman’s sexuality. This can happen at any stage of adult life, even when a situation seems like a lost cause. I’m fascinated by that.

A lot of women on the Facebook page for this book have suggested that men should read this. Has your husband, and if he has, how has he reacted?

I love that women want their partners to read my books—to learn, to understand. I hear stories of women putting the novels on the pillow beside them with the words “read this, now you will understand.” My husband finds the books deeply sexy because they delve into a woman’s psyche. He loves being surprised.

Your books are sometimes labeled controversial, but do you think they are?

They’re about the truth, and there shouldn’t be anything controversial about honesty—but of course, it’s often the most shocking thing of all.

Read on

Have You Read?

More by Nikki Gemmell

THE BOOK OF RAPTURE

Three children wake up in a basement room. They have been drugged and taken from their beds in the middle of the night. Where are their parents? Whom can they trust? The family has been betrayed to the government, and Salt Cottage, their home on a cliff top above the ocean, is no longer safe. Their mother’s scientific work has put them all in danger. She must put her faith in an old family friend—and in her children’s own resilience and courage.

“Haunting, thought-provoking, and beautifully written.”

—Marie Claire

“[Gemmell’s] writing is powerful and heartrending as she delves into the working of human relationships, love, and family.”

—Courier-Mail

THE BRIDE STRIPPED BARE

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 has discovered that her new marriage contains mysteries of its own.

“Titillating … like an artful striptease,
The Bride Stripped Bare
ensnares us with its rawness.”

—San Francisco Chronicle
, a Best Book of the Year

“[
The Bride Stripped Bare
] affects a dreamy mood and a poetic brand of erotica.”

—New York Times

LOVESONG

The heartbreaking story of Lillie Bird, a woman from a locked religious community who finds freedom at last in a strange new world, England, but is accused of murder.

“Gemmell evokes place superbly … while Lillie, clever, confused, and vulnerable, is real and touching.”

—Sunday Times

“A lovely, lyrical creation that has melody and melancholy aching through its sentences … bewitchingly good.”

—Elle
, Book of the Month

ALICE SPRINGS

Snip Freeman lost her father long ago. Accompanied by her lover, Dave, she embarks on a journey into the vast and fierce landscape of the Australian interior to find her father and unravel the terrifying silence of her childhood.

“
Alice Springs
is like a female version of Kerouac’s
On the Road
.”

—Cosmopolitan

“Leaks deep into the imagination … . haunts one long after the book ends.”

—The Times

SHIVER

A young woman, Fin, fulfills her ambition to visit Antarctica, the last great wilderness on earth. Here she integrates with the local community, learning to respect their customs and way of life. But she breaks the strictest taboo of all when she falls in love.

“Gemmell writes brilliantly.”

—Sunday Times

“Her inimitable, urgent, and demanding style makes her books impossible to put down or forget.”

—Madame Figaro

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Other Books by Nikki Gemmell

Shiver

Cleave

Lovesong

The Bride Stripped Bare

Pleasure: An Almanac of the Heart

The Book of Rapture

Why You Are Australian

Credits

Cover design by Amanda Kain

Cover photograph © plainpicture/PhotoAlto

First published in 2011 in the United Kingdom by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

P.S.
^™is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

WITH MY BODY
. Copyright © 2012 by Nikki Gemmell. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

F
IRST
H
ARPER
P
ERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED 2012.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-06-212263-6

EPub Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 978-0-06-212264-3

12 13 14 15 16
OV/RRD
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada