With My Body

With My Body
Nikki Gemmell

In 2003 Nikki Gemmell created a sensation when, writing under the tag ‘Anonymous’, her novel The Bride Stripped Bare became a literary phenomenon, with its raw and unflinching depiction of female sexuality.Now, years later, Gemmell returns with another tour de force, With My Body, and addresses the question 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 three 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 the memory of an old love affair – the consequences of which she has never resolved. She goes back to her past and confronts it, and the result is an exhilarating examination of present-day desire.With My Body is 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.

With My Body

Nikki Gemmell

Contents

Title Page

Prologue

I

Lesson 1

Lesson 2

Lesson 3

Lesson 4

Lesson 5

Lesson 6

Lesson 7

Lesson 8

Lesson 9

Lesson 10

Lesson 11

Lesson 12

Lesson 13

Lesson 14

Lesson 15

Lesson 16

Lesson 17

Lesson 18

II

Lesson 19

Lesson 20

Lesson 21

Lesson 22

Lesson 23

Lesson 24

Lesson 25

Lesson 26

Lesson 27

Lesson 28

Lesson 29

Lesson 30

Lesson 31

Lesson 32

Lesson 33

Lesson 34

III

Lesson 35

Lesson 36

Lesson 37

Lesson 38

Lesson 39

Lesson 40