With My Body

April 9, 2012
Best-known for 2003’s The Bride Stripped Bare (originally published anonymously), Gemmell revisits a woman’s sexual awakening in her tender though occasionally overwrought latest. The novel follows an unnamed, middle-aged, Australian wife and mother of three living in England, whose loving but sexless marriage drives her to reflect on her passionate affair with an older man when she was a teenager. Compellingly written in the second person, the book comprises the protagonist’s own writings to herself as she struggles to make sense of the past. Aided in her reminiscences by a progressive Victorian book for women—given to her and annotated by her lover, Tol, years ago—the narrator recounts their first chance meeting, when, as a teen desperate to escape her icy stepmother, she discovers a run-down manse wherein Tol is busy renovating and writing. Despite his protestations that she stay away, the young narrator persists, and soon a romance blossoms. But suddenly—after declaring his love—Tol disappears, and she’s been wondering what happened ever since. Though Gemmell’s beautiful prose sometimes lapses into melodrama, her gift for storytelling makes this a rewarding read.