Whether or not the decision to publish this book anonymously was a genuine approach by the author to achieve authenticity of expression (as stated by the author) or merely a clever marketing technique designed to attract interest in the mystique of the author’s own personality (a mysterious leak to the press as to the true identity of the author), nevertheless it must be admitted that this choice serves as a powerful symbol for the secret life of the novel’s protagonist, and therefore deserves it’s legitimacy. If one has trouble with the concept – imagine it as part of the title, it works just as well.

Briefly, the story concerns the sexual liberation of a married woman. She suspects that her husband is having an affair with her best friend and decides to begin a secret life of sexual discovery. She meets a Spanish virgin (do they exist?) and proceeds to teach him all the sexual secrets her own husband is too stubborn to learn. She experiences true sexual bliss, though the cost proves to be too much.

Reviews of this novel are fairly consistently at one of two poles: soft porn for the chick-lit generation; the predictability of the story, the silly martyrdom of a slut…etc – or the other extreme: a novel for all women, representative of their common, modern situation and presented in a sassy, witty style. Hardly is there a mention of the psychology of the character, and the novelist’s skill in the rendering. It seems to be a classic case of the marketing obscuring the actual content of the book. Even Nikki Gemmell herself, in an interview with Andrew Denton describes it as a book about sex. I hardly think she is doing her own book justice. Yes – it talks extensively about sex, but it is rarely done so abstracted from the psychology of the protagonist. Aside from the sex there are extensive expositional sections outlining the greater details of her life. This is not simply ballast, it serves to explain the decisions of the protagonist, the nature of her relationships with the other characters and her ultimate judgments as to the nature of her existence.

Surely, any judgment of this novel must start here. The comment that the story is predictable is truly a one dimension conception of the nature of narrative. The story could have ended with aliens coming to announce peace in the galaxy – unpredictable, but clearly stupid. Madam Bovary, (to which a fruitful comparison between this novel could easily be made), is certainly predictable, the madam’s suicide as inevitable as sunrise; but the novel is one of the greatest psychological portraits of the modern, romantic, middle class sufferings ever written. In fact, I would say its the more unpredictable elements of this novel which detract from its success as a composition: the foray with the taxi drivers, and her death. I really felt that there was nothing in the material proceeding that explained her desire to put herself in a possibly life threatening situation – and her death, juxtaposed so closely with her satisfaction with motherhood, didn’t ring true at all.

There were other inconsistencies of character as well. The protagonist demonstrates many passive-aggressive symptoms: an over protective sense of her own autonomy, a simultaneous need to be affirmed by authority figures and resentment toward them, an ever growing resentment toward expectations and an explosive temper and moodiness to boot. These symptoms are often handled well, particularly in reference to the character’s relationship with her childhood friend who serves as the refused authority figure. But the symptoms don’t hold and the character transmutes into something else along the way.

Perhaps something original was being aimed at here, but it is difficult to identify exactly what. Her ultimate triumph over her friend through pregnancy, the retreat back to the domestic is way too confident a move for the character. This part of the narrative really lacks finesse, as the author struggles to render the admittedly challenging material. What was needed was the continuation of subtlety wherein the character’s ambivalence and double-mindedness is given full force throughout the whole narrative. The question facing any understanding of a passive-aggressive condition is the successful rendering of the means by which the pathology is maintained even while the person’s life is falling apart around them. How do they manage avoid the conclusion they are pushing their closest away from them?

Unfortunately, following on from other comments made about this book, there is the claim that this is a novel expressing the desires of woman – that the book represents the secret desires of women in general. No doubt all honest men are dreading the possibility. I found it astonishing that Nikki Gemmell herself also promoted the book in this way – that the author was attempting a generational icon as opposed to the pathological study it ultimately is – well, it makes you wonder what our women are going through. Interestingly, if my assessment of this character as being passive-aggressive is correct, then it’s not an unimportant fact that more men suffer from the disorder than women. Also, unsurprisingly, of those comments that claim that this is a simple story of a slut – these (overly harsh comments) I have heard made exclusively by women, presumably because they take offence at the kind of marketing which suggests that this novel is in some way about them.

Ultimately, I feel Madam Bovary is still a truer novel to me – even if it doesn’t get down to the nitty gritty of sex the way TBSB does. It achieves the tragedy that TBSB only hints toward. I think the story needs re-writing for our generation, but TBSB does not come close to achieving anything like it. Madam Bovary concerned itself with the complete life of the character, explicating her ultimate resistance to an entire bourgeois order – an internal resistance that struggles to find outward expression (which, when achieved ultimately destroys the character). TBSB fails to make a similarly generational statement precisely because of the almost exclusive focus on the inner world of the protagonist. Her relationships, as described, do explain her motivation, but they are relationships described from the inside. Her pathology remains HER pathology, not, rather, a reaction against a modern condition, a status quo. I very much doubt that much empathy for the character would be derived from anyone who isn’t themselves suffering from the same disorder.

But I guess it’s a fine line between those individuals who throw themselves against a system out of a genuine need for the greater whole, and those that are just stupid or ill. After all, how is such a person supposed to know on which side of the line they fall?