By Nicola Heath for the ABC
Australian writer Nikki Gemmell Photo: Supplied
In 2003, there was one book that had everyone talking.
It was The Bride Stripped Bare, a fictional diary of a suburban London housewife who embarks on an affair with a younger Spanish man.
The novel's many explicit sex scenes generated plenty of buzz among readers, as did the fact it was published anonymously.
The mystery of who wrote the book was short-lived, however, with Australian writer Nikki Gemmell soon outed.
Her secretly authored novel was a huge success, becoming the highest-selling book of the year.
But more than two decades after it was published, Gemmell - whose latest novel, Wing, came out in 2024 - has mixed feelings about the book.
"For years and years and years, it was a curse," she tells ABC Radio National's The Book Show.
While the book was a commercial success, Gemmell believes the fracas that accompanied its publication damaged her reputation.
Now, however, she can see a silver lining.
"I do see it as a blessing, because it really connected with readers, and that's what we as writers want to do.
"So yes, I will own it. It is a blessing - with qualifications."
Taking refuge in anonymity
Gemmell wrote The Bride Stripped Bare while on maternity leave from her job as a journalist at the BBC World Service in London.
She had already published three novels - Shiver (1997), Cleave (1998) and Lovesong (1999) - and was keen to pursue novel writing full-time.
Specifically, she wanted to write a novel that dealt honestly with marriage, and sex within marriage.
She even had a title in mind, courtesy of Marcel Duchamp's famous artwork, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (known as Large Glass).
But as she tried to write the manuscript, she couldn't make it work.
"It was like wading through thigh-high mud," she says.
Her writer's block stemmed from fear readers would believe the story described her relationship with her husband.
"I was in this little expat bubble in London. I had my beautiful man and my gorgeous little baby, and we were in this little nest of togetherness," she says.
Gemmell had already faced conjecture about how much of her writing was autobiographical.
"[In] my previous three novels, people had always confused the fiction with the non-fiction," she says.
Now that she was married and navigating new motherhood, the stakes seemed higher.
The path forward came via an unlikely source: Virginia Woolf's essay A Room of One's Own.
"I came across a line, 'Anonymity is a woman's refuge', and it was like a light bulb went off in my head," she says.
"It was like, 'That's it! I can just disappear from this entire process'."
Gemmell saw a parallel with another powerful act of creation she'd recently experienced: giving birth.
"[In labour] you're letting it all hang out - you're defecating in front of a midwife, you're completely naked, you're swearing to heaven … and you feel completely stripped bare and egoless and empowered," Gemmell says.
"I thought, 'I can pour all that into my writing … It doesn't matter who I am; I don't need to be attached to this'."
The effect was liberating. For the first time, Gemmell felt free to write unhindered by what others might think of her.
"I could be experimental, I could be audacious, I could be cheeky and say things that I would never say with my name attached to them. I just let rip, and that process of writing felt so strong and viscerally powerful," she says.
"Once I decided to become anonymous, I knew exactly what I wanted to write, and it was the most exhilarating writing process I've ever had."
Unmasked as the author
When Gemmell's agent, David Goodwin, read the manuscript, he was immediately enthusiastic.
He suggested she publish the novel under her name but Gemmell refused.
Gemmell found the prospect of anonymity appealing for another reason.
"I am an extreme introvert who has trained herself to be out in the world and behave like a regular person. It's taken decades," she says.
"Back then, I was very shy … Anonymity for me meant that I could just disappear from the whole process."
However, just as the book was going to print, Gemmell's cover was blown.
Goodwin had taken the book to the Frankfurt Book Fair, where its provenance quickly became the subject of speculation.
"There was some rumour that it was Salman Rushdie's ex-wife," Gemmell recalls.
When she read about her book in a London newspaper, she knew she was "buggered".
"The journalist in me … knew from the way the article was written that someone would try and find me."
Find her they did. In the ensuing frenzy, Gemmell and her family endured a barrage of door knocks and phone calls from journalists who were on her tail.
Gemmell still doesn't know who outed her.
"It could have been someone with loose lips at a cocktail party - I don't know," she says.
"I went mad trying to work out who on earth it was because I felt like I'd completely shot my literary career in the foot."
When the news broke, she was still editing the manuscript - a process she found excruciating in the furore's aftermath.
"For me, it was an entirely different book with my name on it, as opposed to Anonymous," she says.
"I wanted it to connect with every woman … and that was helped by having 'Anonymous' on the cover."
She tussled with her editor, Courtney Hodell, about what to cut and what to keep.
"It was the most intense time. I would be crying, and I would be saying, 'Courtney, I can't have that in the book now because people know that I've written it', and I just found it so embarrassing.
"She was this very firm New Yorker … and she just said, 'Nikki, those bits you want to put the red pen through, they are the most connecting, the most authentic, the most honest, and they are the bits that people will remember. So just try to be brave and do it.' Courtney won, and those bits stayed."
Ironically, Gemmell's attempt to publish the book anonymously attracted more media attention than she would have faced if she'd published it under her name from the outset.
"The whole reason why I didn't want to do this completely blew up in my face," she says.
An instruction manual for blokes
Perhaps surprisingly for a salacious tale of infidelity, the book bears the dedication: "For my husband. For every husband."
Gemmell was initially reluctant to let her husband read the manuscript, terrified at what his response might be.
She needn't have worried - far from disliking the book, he found its exploration of female sexuality "sexy".
"It was knowledge. Knowledge is power," Gemmell says.
"And I did write the book as a manifesto, as an instruction manual … I wanted to tell the blokes what we want but I wanted to do it with great beauty."
- ABC
