Nikki Gemmell

The skills involved in writing successful novels are rather different from those needed for a weekly newspaper column. In a column, a thousand words must engage the reader, week in week out, whether or not the writer has anything urgent to say. A short deadline is less forgiving, allowing scant time for polishing and self-editing. On the other hand, stylistic idiosyncrasies that might become tiresomely repetitive in a longer format can be indulged, even encouraged – part of the charm.

One could be forgiven for thinking that after the succès de scandale of her previous novel, The Bride Stripped Bare (2005), Nikki Gemmell’s next novel would also address the permutations of sexual desire, particularly since the title of her latest novel is The Book of Rapture and the cover is a riot of fleshy red and purple. This time round, though, Gemmell is more interested in exploring religious, scientific and familial rapture. There is barely a skerrick of sex within the deckle-edged pages.

Nikki Gemmell’s third novel, Love Song, set in both Australia and England, is a striking and memorable work. The style is sharp, jagged even, but so energetic that it sucked me in. I had to read it twice to know more than the fact that I had thoroughly enjoyed it.

This is a story written to an unborn child by a mother who seems, at first, both old and young, something which proves to be the case. She is Lillie, a girl who has survived the eccentric, cult-like community that incarcerated her, and who has survived the loss of her lover, the child’s father. She has survived a short life dogged by false accusation. She is also a young woman who, at the point of writing that old person’s document, her memoirs, is scarcely into her adulthood and is still inexperienced in the ways of the world. Her voice is fresh, young and oddly wise.