With my Body – Nikki Gemmell
Some of you may have read ‘The Bride Stripped Bare’, a novel initially published anonymously which had women and men around the world wondering who wrote the touching, sometimes painfully honest story of a newly wed, yet bored woman who disappears and starts an affair with a stranger she meets at the library. The author, Australian Nikki Gemmell, has since been revealed and she has followed up on her success with ‘With My Body’, first published in 2011.
The Body in question is that of a woman in her 40ies, who suffers from both her husbands’ inattentiveness in the bedroom as well as the day to day life as a mother, amongst other increasingly competitive mothers. She escapes down memory lane by reliving the years as a young girl, growing up in the Australian bush. On one of her regular tours with her bike, the young girl stumbles across a house that seems like nobody lives there, yet her curiosity makes her abandon the bike and have a closer look. What she finds is a man, a writer, who has escaped from the city to this house and is currently working to restoring it. She offers to help, which he initially refused. She’s persistent however and they finally embark on an intense affair. The reader never forgets the transgression it is that a man in his 30s or 40s (the reader can only guess) should start an affair with a girl in her teens. And yet, following the girl as she has her first sexual experiences all the way to discovering the pleasures of submission to not one man, but a whole room full of men is a thrilling journey.
Having never fully recovered from this first love its’ abrupt ending and the consequences, she decides to leave her new life in England to travel back to Australia on a mission to confront the past, not sure whether she will ever return.
The prose itself is rich in naturalistic detail and doesn’t shy away from calling a vagina a ‘cunt’ if the context asks for it. The magic of this book is the beautiful combination of the romance as well as the poison of first love with the often raw elements of human sexuality. This book offers not only erotic pleasure, but out of curiosity for this woman and her struggles which, in one way or the other, are close to every modern woman’s heart. Or, to put it bluntly, it’s for masturbating AND thinking, good right?
Enjoy and Make Love,
The girls
