Product Description

With her jaunty dissection of the sex life and the private grooming habits of the novel's 18-year-old narrator, Helen Memel, Charlotte Roche has turned the previously unspeakable into the national conversation in Germany. Since its debut in February, the novel ("Feuchtgebiete," in German) has sold more than 680,000 copies, and is the biggest selling book on Amazon anywhere in the world. The book is 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. Wetlands opens in a hospital room after an intimate shaving accident. It gives a detailed topography of Helen's hemorrhoids, continues into the subject of anal intercourse and only gains momentum from there, eventually reaching avocado pits as objects of female sexual satisfaction and - here is where the debate kicks in - just possibly female empowerment. Clearly the novel has struck a nerve, catching a wave of popular interest in renewing the debate over women's roles and image in society.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21518 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From the Inside Flap
Helen Memel lies in the Department of Internal Medicine at Maria Hilf Hospital. While she waits for her divorced parents to come and visit her - who she hopes will finally be reconciled by the side of her hospital bed - she begins to examine those parts of her body usually seen as distinctly 'unladylike'. She lets the orderly, Robin, take photos of those areas her curious gaze can't reach. And, on the side, she tends to her collection of avocado stones - which also happen to provide her with invaluable sexual services ...

Wetlands takes an unflinching, and very funny, look at one of the last remaining taboos of today. Courageous, radical and provocative, Charlotte Roche's novel rebels against hygiene hysteria, the sterile aesthetics of women's magazines and standardized dealings with the female body and its sexuality. This is a wonderfully wild story of a heroine both pleasure-seeking and vulnerable, who voices what others do not even dare to think.

About the Author
Charlotte Roche was born in 1978 in High Wycombe, but was brought up and lives in Germany. She has been a highly respected presenter on the German equivalent of MTV.

Customer Reviews

Story of a very damaged young woman
I read this because I wanted to make up my own mind about the controversy it has generated, but the book is actually very different from what I had expected from all the reviews. Yes, it is gross and completely disgusting in lots of places, to the point where there were pages I had to skim through since they were so stomach-churning.

But at heart this is a story of Helen, an emotionally-damaged eighteen-year old, scarred by her family, sexually-promiscuous but lonely, and screaming her pain through her defiant and rebellious relationship to her own body. Like a seven-year old, she thinks she's being clever and shocking, but what gradually builds up in this short book is not a sense of empathy but of pity.

Charlotte Roche isn't Helen, but she has created a monstrously vivid anti-heroine. I can completely understand the people who have slated this book for its repellent and sometimes nauseating episodes, but I can also understand their necessity in defining who and what Helen is. So not a pleasant book to read, but ultimately a brave and interesting one.

Nothing's shocking
Ok, so i bought this after reading an interview with the author in the Guardian. I liked the idea of a book that dealt with female sexuality in an honest and funny way. Unfortunately this book was a massive disappointment.

Although graphic in her detail of bodily parts, fluids and functions, Helen, who tells her whole story from her hospital room, bored me after a while. She is one dimensional - immature and desperate to shock - rather like this book. The subplot about her family secrets was flat and predictable, and i was desperate to find something exciting about this, but nothing came.

It would maybe have had more impact as a short story, but over the course of a whole book, it was a chore to read and unsatisfying to finish.

Controversial ?
Is this really the bestselling book that Amazon distributes? I find that staggering. I wouldn't say that this book is particularly shocking, it clearly sets out to be (could the title and cover be more obvious?), but in the opinion of this reviewer it is trying too hard, lacked depth and I found myself yawning at the obviousness to try and 'shock' the reader. Perhaps in its original language this book was something of a revelation, but in the UK a drawn out tale of a teenagers behaviour changes and habits following their parents' divorce is hardly ground breaking, and I believe there are better ways of telling that story than the context used here.

Without the 'controversial' content 'Wetlands' would be very short story and a thin book, in many ways comparable to many generic Hollywood blockbuster films that take themselves too seriously. Take away the special effects, stunts and explosions and you are left with very little, it is over very quickly and you are left feeling unfulfilled at the end and desire something with greater substance and originality.

If you must waste three hours of your life reading this, borrow a copy and save your money.