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Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914 EAN: 9780007162260 ISBN: 000716226X Label: Fourth Estate Manufacturer: Fourth Estate Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 384 Publication Date: 2004-03 Publisher: Fourth Estate Release Date: March 16, 2004 Studio: Fourth Estate Editorial Review: Product Description: A woman disappears, leaving behind an incendiary diary chronicling a journey of sexual awakening. To all who knew her, she was the Good Wife: happy, devoted, content. But the diary reveals a secret self, one who's discovered that her new marriage contains mysteries of its own.Inspired by a manuscript written by an anonymous Elizabethan woman who dared to speak of what women truly desire, she tastes for the first time the intoxicating power of knowing what she wants and how to get it. The question is, How long can she sustain a perilous double life? In writing The Bride Stripped Bare, the author decided to remain anonymous so she would feel absolutely free to explore a woman's inner world. As she writes in her afterword, 'That doesn't mean this book is a memoir; it's many things to me, fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and fact, a quilt pieced together not only from my stories but those of my friends.' Coolly impassioned, The Bride Stripped Bare tells startling truths about love and sex. It will make you question whether it is ever entirely possible to know another person. Related Items:      see moreAverage Rating:
 Rating:  - "For it is the long, long nights that defeat you. When you are blown out like a candle."The best second person narrative I have read, ever! This is languid and beautiful and biting, tragic and edge of your seat. I started the book and within the first chapter I was committed. The litany on loop in my head? "This can't end well." It is the story of a woman's search for herself. Discovering and then re-discovering identity in the face of and in reaction to other people's expectations. What is, perhaps, even more horrifying is her own complicity in the architecture of her life. She is as much to blame as anyone else. I loved that this was not an easy book. I loved that everyone was a villain and that everyone was a hero. It is hard and frightening and terribly real. I identified. It's extreme in places, but there is a truth in the prose. That somewhere out there, somewhere in the world, there is this woman. That all women carry fragments of her. She is you. Rating:  - Gets a few points for trying, but overall dissapointing......Like a lot of the other reviewers, I was pretty intrigued by the hype surrounding this book and thought it held a lot of potential. While it was certaintly an easy enough read (I actually read it in one sitting in one of those random arm chairs in Barnes and Noble, and I'm glad I didn't break down and buy it), and skirted around some interesting, provocative, and important themes and issues, it just fell short somehow in the end and failed to raise the questions it so desperately screamed to present. I'm not by any means an easily offended person and can handle graphic content, but in this case, the explicit scenes were not convincing enough to carry any real heft and came across as trying too hard rather than offering anything truly original or thought provoking. The course of the story felt kind of stale and predictable, despite all the attempts to shock, and I agree with other reviewers that the mystery surrounding the dissapearance of the bride seemed kinda pointless. And honestly, by the time I reached the end, I didn't really care what her final fate was. It wasn't that I didn't like the character, it was just, the story hadn't grabbed me enough to really make me interested in what happened to her. I also found the titlar character to be more a series of cliches than a three dimensional person (like all the characters in the book), and although she had some promising observations here and there and there was some decent writing sprinkled throughout the nowhere bound story, The Bride never really came alive in such a way as to make her real or, frankly, interesting. Overall, I was dissapointed by how much the mark was missed.....I couldn't shake the feeling that there was a worthwhile story in there somewhere. Oh, yeah, there is, and it's been told before in far more effective manner (Fear of Flying, The Awakening, Madame Bovary, Lady Chatterly's Lover, and the list goes on and on) Rating:  - Good impulse buyI bought this book on a whim and was surprised. I wasn't expecting the erotic content, but I found it actually a little refreshing. Many people say it was poorly written but it is really just in diary form, which doesn't exactly make you think of literary masterpiece in the first place so you shouldn't have too high of expectations anyway. I don't usually like diary form books, but it is true that I couldn't put it down. I'll be reading it again because overall I enjoyed it. A quick, hot read. Rating: - I didn't know whether to be aroused or disgusted."The Bride Stripped Bare" is written as a diary by a wife who has mysteriously disappeared. She talks frankly about sex (think penthouse letters) and love. The book was initially published anonymously. Too bad it's not anymore--an anonymous author adds a whole new spin on a story like this--makes it more juicy-as if it's a true story. The diary format is an easy read. It's broken up into many bite size chapters. The prose surprised me. Though the author's second person POV is at first off-putting and annoying, it's easily ignorable after awhile. Despite the constant "yous," the characters are well flushed and thorough. And the main character/narrator is not too likeable--actually no characters are likeable--which of course makes it difficult to get into a book. For the most part, I found the story entirely believable, though where I think it loses people is about 1/2 way through-when the author/narrator kind of loses it--and goes porn star with random men. Rating: - literary sex anyone?This is a quick read. It's a novel about a woman obsessing on her sexuality in the context of her relationships with her husband, her best friend, her mother, and her lover. I found her unique voice compelling me along, e.g., "Darkness is greedy now, it crowds into the afternoons. The year is galloping toward Christmas." Short, clear sentences cover so much territory and get you thinking about life. |
