Thanks to a friend of mine I got my hands on this book.
The author is Charlotte Roche and the name is Wetlands (original title: Feuchtgebiete).
What got my attention was the juicy title, of course, then I read a few reviews of the book which were so controversial that only added up to my desire to read it. I must admit that my expectations got quite high here.
Long story short, it is about a 18-year-old girl/woman/, Helen, who is very sexually active and who accidentally gets her anus infected and spends some time in the hospital. It is generally the thoughts of Helen and not much of a storyline. The book started as a protest to all the wide-spread standards of how a woman should keep her body neat and clean, but somewhere along the way got twisted in the sick(in my opinion) understanding of hygiene the main character has. Don't get me wrong here, I respect her choices and ways of exploring her body, it is just not what makes me happy and gives me a feeling of freedom. I think that the girl is quite confused and caught in her attempt to get her divorced parents back together. But this part of the story somehow gets lost in the very explicit and graphic impressions of her habits. It gets pretty disgusting at points. I had to stop reading it a couple of times, because I felt sick (as in stop-reading-or-you-will-vomit-in-your-mouth way). It is only nasty because it is still a taboo in our society to talk about personal things like this. They exist and we are aware of this but noone wants to know how others shit, menstruate or do an enema to themselves in the tub. People buy the book expecting it to be sexy, pornographic and whatnot and turn out wrong. It really is a mixture... it is sad, funny, sexy at moments, but we fail to pay attention to all this, because we are shocked, shocked and grossed out of the way one openly speaks of what shall not be told. The only 'hole' in the plot I see at the ending, I just don't get it. It seems the author needed a closure, but was out of ideas so she just rushed to it. And therefore I finished the book with a slight feeling of disappointment. But all in all I enjoyed Wetlands and probably would recommend it to my twisted friends or to my enemies :)
/random quotes from random pages/
"As far back as I can remember, I've had haemorrhoids" - very promising opening line...
"When I jerk somebody off, I always make sure that some cum gets on my hand. I run my fingers through it and let it dry under my long nails. That way, later in the day, I can reminisce about my good fuck partner by biting my nails and getting bits of the hardened cum to play with in my mouth; I chew on it, after tasting it and letting it slowly dissolve, I swallow it. It's an invention I'm proud of: the memorable-sex bonbon"
"When it comes to my period, I don't care about hygiene, either. It's blown completely out of proportion. Tampons are expensive and unnecessary. When I have my period, I use toilet paper to make my own tampons while I'm sitting on the toilet. I'm proud of that"
