With My Body

Synopsis

In 2003 Nikki Gemmell created waves when, writing under the tag 'Anonymous', The Bride Stripped Bare became a literary sensation, with its raw and unflinching depiction of female sexuality. She called it 'a very honest take on sex, from a woman's perspective', and it went on to top bestseller lists around the world. Now, eight years later, Nikki returns with another tour de force, articulating thoughts and feelings that most people simply cannot put into words. Told in her distinctively lyrical style, With My Body addresses the questions of what is intimacy and whether it is ever truly possible to know another person. It is at once a manifesto of married mothers everywhere and a highly personal story of one woman's sexual awakening. A wife, comfortably married and with several children, is contemplating middle age along with all the constraints of motherhood. Finding herself numb and locked down in an unending cycle of school runs, laundry and meal times, she cannot at first see a way to live with honesty. Even her husband, whom she loves, has never reached the core of her. Despairing of ever finding a way through her family to her own identity, she returns to the memory of an old love affair - the consequences of which she has never resolved. This is beautiful, literary writing at its best - exquisitely raw, emotional and bold, and deeply resonant of the classic French erotic writings of Colette, Nin and Duras, but with a modern and provocative twist.