The Bride Stripped Bare is a 2003 novel written by the Australian writer Nikki Gemmell, originally published anonymously. The title is borrowed from the painting The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (also known as The Large Glass) by Marcel Duchamp. It went on the become the best-selling book by an Australian author in 2003.
In 2005, it was announced that Australian screenwriter Andrew Bovell, who penned the award-winning film drama, Lantana, was to adapt The Bride Stripped Bare for the screen.
The book is written in the form of a diary by a young wife who has disappeared. In it, the author talks frankly about oral sex and love, and chronicles her relationship with a mysterious man she meets at a library group.
The author has said that she "loved the idea of writing a book that dived under the surface of a woman's life, a seemingly contentedly married woman, and explored her secret world-with ruthless honesty". The act of writing the work anonymously she has described as "liberating".
A follow-up novel entitled With My Body was published in Australia and the UK in October 2011 and is scheduled to be published in the United States in 2012. According to the publisher, it is companion piece but not explicitly a sequel to The Bride Stripped Bare.
Famous quotes containing the words bride, stripped and/or bare:
“That is ever the way. ‘Tis all jealousy to the bride and good wishes to the corpse.”
—J.M. (James Matthew)
“There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“Of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)