Charlotte Roche: Wetlands

[Stewart]

Now, this is a book that has been causing a bit of a stir recently. In its original language its called Feuchtgebiete and its reported as being a German porn novel.

Well, as reported in the Bookseller, the UK rights have been snapped up by Fourth Estate.

Here's some further information:

Feuchtgebiete, which translates as "moist regions" and which is being published as Wetlands by Fourth Estate, has been subject to controversy because of its frank examination of female sexuality. It is a bestseller in Germany, and is the first German novel to top Amazon's world bestseller chart. The book is about a teenage girl and her relationship with her own body.

"The novel is about the bold place between reality and imagination where a lot of people's sexual identities reside," said Pearson. "It's a very sarcastic, very funny and very playful book."

Pearson is likely to publish in hardback next spring. He believes that the novel will "hit a nerve with people". "We live in a highly sexualised society," he said. "Even yoghurt adverts seem to be sexualised in some way and the book is a reaction to that kind of society."

Should be...interesting.

[Katy]

Hi Stewart,

What an illustrious start to my life here at WLF. I have, of course, read Feuchtgebiete, like millions of Germans. At the moment, it's the only book anyone is talking about over here, and as Pearson seems to expect, sex sells.

It's a deliberately shocking story about an 18-year-old girl in hospital for (shudder) an anal fissure. She describes her wild sex life, which is shocking enough, but it's the anti-hygiene side of things that gets people worked up. I won't provide details here - suffice to say I started reading it over lunch and had to stop after I nearly choked on my sauerkraut. The basic plotline is that the narrator is trying to get her divorced parents together again around her hospital bed. Because although they've fucked her up, her mum and dad, she's still a little kid who longs for an intact family.

I found it sad, funny, moving and disgusting in equal turns. It's not great literature - Charlotte Roche is a TV presenter - but it has a message to put across and it has achieved that. And it's made Roche rich for a while. Apparently she originally wanted to write a kind of advice book for girls, an antidote to Heidi Klum and Claudia Schiffer and shaved bodies and "intimate wash lotion". But this was what came out in the end. So it's feminist porn, people, not just your bog-standard stuff.

Not suitable for mothers of 18-year-old girls. But 18-year-old girls will love it.

[Stewart]

Thanks, Katy.

I suppose the last time something this controversial came round was a few years back when Italian Melissa P. (Melissa Panarello) published One Hundred Strokes Of The Brush Before Bed, a diary of extreme sex during her teenage years, of which she was barely out of.

[Mirabell]

I wouldn't call it porn. It's about the fact of the "bodiness" of our bodies, if that makes sense. It's out to disgust people, because that disgust is important to the purpose of it.

It's lots of fun to read the 1-star amazon reviews on amazon.de

Sadly, it's not particularly well written, much of this will probably get creased out in a good translation, it's not bad, it's just in an annoying way oral.

[Eric]

Smegma rules, OK?

It's fun to read, but not well written... In other words, it's fun reading about anal fissures for the shock value, but the book wouldn't fulfil the exacting Schopenhauerian criteria for simplicity. I'm not convinced, especially reading all the comments on German Amazon which generally give it one point out of five, that this is something for me. It's as crude and sensationalist as all the late novels of Louis Paul Boon, which I provoked people with on another thread (which then came to a shuddering halt). I'm sure there are other authors born in High Wycombe that don't need the female member to make literature. In her own way Cockroach is another Jelly Neck. Publishers have sold all their master baiters, now they want to continue to make profits, so it's the turn of the females to describe their genitals. What are they going to do next? There are only two basic types of genitals.

Please let me hypocritically wallow a bit more, and throw the smegma in your face. Roche says:

CR: First of all, the themes that appear in my book ? the body, illness, hospitals, masturbation ? are themes that I have always been fascinated by. I dare say they?re my hobbyhorses. Whenever someone at a dinner party says that they?ve had an operation, I?ll be the first person to shout: ?Come on, let me see it then!? So it?s really the case that these issues are close to my heart ? it?s not like I decided to write a shocking book first, and then just wrote down the most disgusting things I could imagine. I enjoy thinking about these sort of things in detail.

I?m convinced that in contemporary society a lot of women have a very messed-up attitude to their own bodies. We?re obsessed with cleanliness, with getting rid of our natural excretions and our body hair. So I wanted to write about the ugly parts of the human body. The smelly bits. The juices of the female body. Smegma. In order to tell that story, I created a heroine that has a totally creative attitude towards her body ? someone who has never even heard that women are supposedly smelly between their legs. A real free spirit.

(...)

But it?s more than just porn. For a start, it?s not really sexy, it?s also quite disgusting. There are the haemorrhoids, Helen?s injury to her sphincter, and so on. So when you read the book and you get a bit too excited, you?ll immediately get turned off again. I wanted to present the whole package: women aren?t just a sexy presentation space, they also get ill, they have to go to the toilet, they bleed. If you love someone and sleep with them, you?ll have to face those dirty bits ? otherwise you might as well not get started with the business of sex in the first place.

Source: http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/Interview-Charlotte-Roche

Yes, all human beings have bits of their bodies that become smelly if they are not properly washed. But to make literature out of it? Isn't this another piece of publisher desperation.

[Mirabell]

no, it's fun because I like her voice in that book. It's a tender novel, about an unhappy woman, burdened by her parents' divorce.