Wetlands

Roche's explicit and provocative debut about an 18-year-old girl with a very active sex

life was a bona fide sensation in Germany upon its publication earlier this year. Helen

Memel, hospitalized for the treatment of an infected anal lesion, spends much of the

n [...]
Visa längre beskrivning

Roche's explicit and provocative debut about an 18-year-old girl with a very active sex

life was a bona fide sensation in Germany upon its publication earlier this year. Helen

Memel, hospitalized for the treatment of an infected anal lesion, spends much of the

novel in the hospital scheming on how to reunite her divorced parents. Between visits by

hospital staff and her family, Helen shares her vast sexual experience, details how she

rebels against her mother's uptightness by reveling in excretions, and maintains a high

level of curiosity about her own body (and, of course, others'). Among the graphic sex

scenes and tidbits on her avocado tree–growing hobby, Helen dishes gnarly stories about

leaving a used tampon in an elevator, dribbling a trail of urine from the bathroom to

her bed and eating scabs. Through Helen's mix of eroticism and profanity, Memel attacks

conventional views on women's hygiene, sexuality and the definition of femininity.

Though there isn't much plot—it feels largely like a buffet of filth and

screwing—Helen's take on life is enough to keep the pages turning. (Apr.)

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Review:

"Not many literary readings are restricted to an over-eighteen audience. Fewer still

take place under circus tents. Yet nothing could be more appropriate for the scandalous

German best-seller Wetlands...a headlong dash through every crevice and byproduct,

physical and psychological, of its narrator’s body and mind. It is difficult to

overstate the raunchiness of the novel, and hard to describe in a family newspaper. With her jaunty dissection of the sex life and the private grooming habits of the

novel’s eighteen-year-old narrator, Charlotte Roche has turned the previously

unspeakable into the national conversation in Germany..." / The New York Times

"Using language explicit enough to make the Mayflower Madam blush...the sassy if

confessional tone of Wetlands introduces a 21st century Lolita whose bravado is slowly chipped away. Exhilarating, moving, sad, and scary." / Library Journal

"A sharply-written, taboo-busting black comedy, both gross and engrossing...Wetlands, in the tradition of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, is a remarkable novel about mental illness that has been mistaken for feminist literature." / Newstatesman