About Nikki Gemmell

Nikki Gemmell (born 1966) is an Australian author, from Wollongong, New South Wales.
She is known for her use of the second-person narrative.
Her best-known work is the 2003 novel 'The Bride Stripped Bare', (although originally written and published anonymously) an explicit exploration of female sexuality.

About the Book
Lillie has come a long way from the shimmering heat, big skies and rocky mountains of her home. A long way not just in terms of distance, but in terms of experience. For it is here in England, a land of cold, scuffed and tumbling streets, that she finds the love she has needed for so long. Lovesong is a romance, but it is also a tightly woven thriller, a sumptuous and truly extraordinary work. Drawing on the themes of displacement and home that threaded through her previous novels, Gemmell has crafted a gripping plot, peopled it with sympathetic characters and enfolded it in language of startling originality and beauty.

I am so glad I stuck with this. I was quite frankly 'bored' with this book for the first 60 or so pages, and had begun to dislike the change in Gemmell's style in this, her 3rd book. Admittedly I found her 2nd book “Cleave” to be somewhat clunky and unpolished – the work of an inexperienced storyteller almost. However, I am so glad I didn’t give up on her or on this book, because this is by far the best book I have read in a while. I polished off the remaining 187 pages over the course of a rainy Saturday morning, accompanied by many cups of tea.
This is one of the nicest love stories I have read in years. It is without the usually cliché of boy meets girl, but at the same time not one of those ridiculous tragedies either.
It was also the first book I have read written by an Australian author that switches between Australia (where I now live) and England (where I spent the first of my 23 years). There were many lines that made me smile to myself, such as the comment about pointless plastic bowls in sinks.
This was a great reminder to myself of why I read an Author’s works in the order they were written. It has been great to see Gemmell improve over the course of her first 3 books. I now can’t wait to finally read A Bride Stripped Bare which has sat on my “to be read” pile patiently for years!

This book went in the mail today to the Winner of the 2014 Australian Literature Sweepstakes

I hope it is enjoyed :)

Thank you J4shaw for sending this book and for organizing the Australian Literature Sweepstakes. I have not heard of Nikki Gemmell before so I am really looking forward to a new Australian author. Thanks for the tea bags as well. I look forward to trying them too.

I had never heard of Nikki Gemmell before receiving this book. She wrote two books before this one and it was written in 2001. I will have to see if I can find any others by her because I was very impressed with Love Song.
Written in the first person as an explanation of the narrator’s life to her unborn child, the first paragraphs snag the reader and hardly let go until the end. Lillie Bird was raised in a religious community in Australia named Sunshine although her parents were outsiders. Her father bought the local newspaper before Lil was born and he and Lil’s mother have made their life there. Lil’s mother, Rebecca, came to Australia from England and fell in love with Tiriel and never went home. Tiriel was a drug user and wannabe journalist but when they moved to Sunshine he cleaned himself up. Lillie seems to have always felt like an outsider in Sunshine. She reads books and isn’t much good at athletics and doesn’t talk much. Then, at age 13, she was sentenced to never leaving her parents’ property until she became an adult for the crime of starting a fire in the local school. Other than her parents the only person she had contact with was Edith Jansun, the local librarian. Ed, as Lil calls her, brings her new books and magazines and talks to her. Although most young girls would consider this a punishment Lil was quite happy to stay home. Or at least she was until she turned 21 at which point she was supposed to be free. However, the people of Sunshine still don’t want her sullying their town and it looks like Lil might become a permanent recluse. She is wild to discover the world and especially to discover men. Finally her parents come up with a solution. Lil will go to England to stay with her maternal grandfather, Cedric, for six months. Lil has never met Cedric but anything that gives her a way out of Sunshine is okay with her. England is the Promised Land for her.
Gemmell has a knack for description whether it be people or the land or clothing or sex. Take this paragraph from when Lil first arrives in London:
Greedily I stare out at that new world with both palms pressed to the car window, stare at the sea of heads on footpaths and the people threading between stilled cars and gliding off the backs of buses like practiced ballerinas and holding cupped palms for coins and thrusting umbrella sticks at taxis and deep in mobile talk and I imagine myself striding through it, long for that. Stare a streaks of grime and scrawls of graffiti and herdings of rubbish by old tired doors and the smiling will not be wiped, for in twenty-four hours the whole tone of my living has been grubbied, gloriously so.
True to the title this book is about love but you’ll have to read it to find out more.

I left this book in the Book Exchange shelf while the nice people in the center were letting my husband use their telephone to call home. This release is for the 2015 52 Towns in 52 Weeks release challenge - Town #26.