Review

Wetlands by Charlotte Roche

Some people described the book as entertaining and humorous, others as perverse and provocative. I would simply describe it as disgusting. In a way, it’s also entertaining because once you start reading, you don’t want to stop before you have finished it. But I’m sure that this book is responsible for my water bill being so high because ever since I read it, I make sure to wash my hands much more often and my showers are longer to make sure that I’m completely clean. I’m not conservative at all and I usually like reading about masturbation, sex or exchange of body fluids. I can recommend a very exciting erotic novel in German which is called Zuckermond by Astrid Martini. The dialogues are a bit flat, but the sex scenes are amazing! And who reads an erotic novel for the dialogues anyway? But in Wetlands, the protagonist describes how unhygienic she lives her life and that on purpose. She tells us how she wipes the toilet seat with her “pussy” ad how she leaves used tampons all over the hospital to make sure that other people benefit from her bacteria. She goes on describing how she doesn’t wash her vagina for weeks at a time, so that the smell is overpowering which is supposed to attract men. Is that true? If it is, I’ll stop dating at once! Or do guys really like it when girls wipe some wetness of their vagina behind their ear? I also wasn’t so keen on reading about her haemorrhoids surgery and how she deliberately hurt herself with pushing a pedal of a hospital bed up her butt to be able to stay longer in hospital because she fell in love with a male nurse. And for everybody who likes happy endings, I can assure that there is one. I, however, hate happy endings and that’s why I will stick to reading more horror fiction; it doesn’t make me feel so uncomfortable about people around me. I can deal better with murder than with bacteria. I’m not telling you not to read Wetlands. Read it! It’s definitely binding; just make sure you’ve already eaten and preferable already digested your food before reading it because you might loose your appetite.