On Tour and a Giveaway: With My Body by Nikki Gemmell

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 awaken.

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. ~~synopsis from Goodreads

My thoughts on With My Body ~~

The author does write beautifully and I found myself falling in love with the words and how they flowed across the pages. The book itself consists of short chapters called lessons. Each lesson starts with a quote from a very old book that really becomes a very important part of the story.

Nikki is very unhappy in her life, as a wife, as a mother and as a daughter. She feels that her emotions have shut down and she is just a shell, going through the motions of her life. She decides to go back to the place where she did feel love to see if she can recapture what she is missing.

We go back to that time and relive her past with her as she learns what love is and what a satisfying sexual life can be like. Can she capture these feelings again so that she can be satisfied with the life she has? The lessons are all there before her, if she takes them to heart.

There were some disturbing parts in the book. The man who Nikki has an affair with in that past summer is much older than she is and takes advantage of her innocence and molds their sexual encounters to his benefit. I was not expecting this book to be as erotic as it was so that caught me a bit off guard. So except for that unexpected aspect of the book, I feel that With My Body is a great story that is beautifully written.

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