Bumpy ride through author's Wetlands

By Charlotte Roche

Translated by Tim Mohr

Harper Collins, 240 pages, $22.99

It's clear from the opening paragraphs of Charlotte Roche's debut novel that the reader is in for a bumpy ride. Our first meeting with our heroine, 18-year-old Helen Melmel, involves a graphic description of her hemorrhoids; she tells us that her doctor calls the bumps below the skin "the cauliflower."

And from there, we're off into mostly uncharted territory, as Roche -- a British-born, German-raised TV presenter -- has her sexually precocious character regale us with all her taboo-busting behaviours involving every bodily fluid, almost none of which can be described in the pages of a family newspaper

But to what end, you might ask?

Actually, it's pretty clear to what end: the rear one. Helen is in the hospital to have surgery on the aforementioned cauliflower, and she has the same tedious obsession with her afflicted area as most patients, going into great detail about its every twinge and excretion. (Roche's point seems to be that the anus should be no more disgusting than any other body part. Point taken, but you wouldn't want to read a blow-by-blow story about a guy recuperating from hip surgery, either. Much of Wetlands is like listening to your grandfather complain about his sciatica, except with more talk about smegma.)

To this, Roche adds in a half-assed (if you'll pardon the phrase) subplot about Helen's divorced parents, whom she is trying to bring back together by staying in the hospital as long as possible to force their meeting, and, of course, some childhood trauma.

The book has already caused a sensation in Europe, topping bestseller lists, causing fainting at readings and inspiring a debate about feminism versus pornography.

The book certainly can't be called pornographic -- it's far from titillating. It actually reads like a manifesto clumsily forced into novel form.

Roche was apparently inspired to write Wetlands (the German title is Feuchtgebiete, which directly translates somewhat less elegantly into Moist Patches) in the "feminine hygiene" aisle of a drugstore, where she was appalled at the many ways in which she was told to be lemony fresh.

Again, her point is taken, but anyone who is on a hobbyhorse about anything is a bit of a pedantic bore, and Helen is a pedantic bore about her body and the way she chooses to use it. From her hospital bed, she lectures the poor, unenlightened majority of us who don't regularly visit prostitutes or stick barbecue tongs in unlikely orifices or intentionally come in close contact with public toilet seats.

She's also a poorly drawn character -- more a collection of designed-to-shock anecdotes than a personality -- and an inconsistent one; she revels in her body's natural odours and functions and is totally disdainful of those who don't, but she's in the hospital because she aggravated a hemorrhoid by carelessly shaving the region, something a true Ms. Au Naturel would scarcely do.

Yes, it's true, women shouldn't feel compelled to behave the way Cosmopolitan magazine tells them to, and yes, our society is beholden to ridiculous standards of over-perfumed uber-hygiene. But just because Helen admits to enjoying popping zits or eating her own snot (among other bodily byproducts) doesn't make her admirable or interesting, nor does it make Wetlands a feminist tract -- or a good read.

Jill Wilson is a Free Press copy editor.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 8, 2009 B7