Review
Katie Mythen has a strong reaction to this often disgusting, sometimes disturbing bestseller…
- Wetlands
- Penguin
Secret History
Once in a while a book comes along that is so inspiring it broadens your horizons, breathes life into your soul and makes you want to be a better person.
Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands is not that book. In fact, if you’re looking for any of these things, you might as well stop reading right now.
The 30-year-old writer’s brave debut novel delves deep into the moist and sticky mind of its narrator, the sexually liberated 18-year-old Helen Memel. Helen is sitting out a hospital stay following what can only be described as an unfortunate incident involving a razor blade. To pass the time, Helen amuses herself by dissecting two subjects. First up? Her epic sexual history - complete with more than one foray into a brothel in search of a female hooker. Helen has accomplished more in the bedroom in 18 years than the average person could fit into an entire lifetime. It would be impressive if it wasn’t detailed enough to make your eyes water. This, ladies and gentlemen, is car-crash reading. I consumed a chapter at lunchtime at work and found myself snapping the book shut as my colleagues walked by, lest they read a sentence over my shoulder and mistakenly think that I’m some kind of masochistic sexual deviant.
In fact, the book was snapped shut on a number of occasions, at least twice when I needed a minute to decide whether I was going to throw-up or not, and two or three more times when I needed a few seconds to cringe at whatever the book’s heroine was shamelessly eating, doing or saying - and my friends consider me to be the most open minded person they know.
Helen is deeply damaged by her parents’ divorce and haunted by the murky memory of her mother’s unsuccessful suicide attempt, so the story, while hilarious in parts, is painfully sad in others. Besides the haemorrhoids, sphincter injuries, illness, hospitals and sex, Helen is obsessive about bodily fluids- and making the most of them. Such is her love for her various secretions, she refuses to wash her hands and can often be found purposely spreading bacteria, determined to prove that the modern obsession with hygiene and cleanliness is not only unnecessary, but morally wrong.
Feuchtgebiete, which translates roughly into ‘moist patches’ or ‘wetlands’ was first published by Cologne’s Dumont Verlag in May of 2008 (the author, an accomplished television presenter and producer, was born in the UK but raised in Germany). Within months of its translation, it had hit bestsellers’ lists across the globe and has been passed around book clubs, Weight Watchers meetings and school yards faster than Lady Chatterley’s Lover ever since.
It’s horrifying to think that, underneath it all, there are real people, people you know who may actually be like this. The descriptions are so detailed you have to wonder how much of it, despite her protestations, is actually based on author Charlotte Roche’s personal experiences but it’s deliciously honest, the kind of stuff that, if you’re anything like me, you secretly delight in - Wetlands is everything you didn’t want to know about a stranger’s personal life.
