Customer Reviews

Wetlands

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

As someone who studies the psychology of disgust this book was recommended to me by a colleague. It is a startlingly refreshing book that engages with subjects that I have never seen so well described before. This book takes an unflinching look at so many things which make human beings uncomfortable, disgusted, ashamed, embarrassed and aroused. The reader is put inside the mind of a young woman who is totally comfortable and even fascinated with all of her body's secretions and manifestations. Thus the book forges a deep intimacy with the main character but also will make a self-reflective reader analyze their own responses and attitudes towards the most private, mundane and animalistic aspects of human beings. This book is not amazing because it deals with anything extraordinary or has a complex plot or character development but because it handles so comprehensively taboo subjects that are at their heart a totally normal part of the human experience.

Billed as the female "Tropic of Cancer" , the modern "Female Eunuch", or even the teen girl's "Catcher in the Rye", the hype surrounding this "Wetlands" is a million times more titillating and infuriating than the book itself.

While it's notions of feminine hygiene and propriety seem ground-breaking to the uninitiated, they've been dealt with earlier (and sadly, with more empowerment) in the male-penned "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues or in a more artful manner in the works of Kathy Acker.

The main character is an emotionally damaged teen whose self-endangerment ( and the endangerment of others) is a "equal-and-opposite" style display of rebellion from her mother's hygiene fixation and whose sexual "freedom" serves to placate her feelings of detachment from her father and abandonment by both parents.
To borrow from the lexicon of the modern 18 year old; This is SO not the feminist manifesto so many make it out to be.

If gross-out stories a la Chuck Palahniuk amuse and entertain you, by all means pick this up.
It was a quick, funny read for what it was worth, however, don't make the mistake of heading into this with the idea that this is an important work, or even one that will be remembered in ten years.

I was excited about the prospect of a book like this - something I hadn't come across before. I am writing this review after having read only 1/3 of it before losing interest. You pick up your novel night after night because you want to know what will happen next. Yes, this is a character study more than than story, but a girl in hopsital after a butt operation relaying gross stories for the sake of grossness, just doesnt cut it.

At first it's quirky, then it's just silly. She eats her snot. Eats her scabs. Sucks on the left overs on her knickers. She drops tampons she is using on the dirty floor, with the intention of it getting dirty, then re-uses it. I'm sorry but you REALLY need more than that stuff to round out a character.

I'm sure the author would be delighted to read the reviews. It really seems like the whole purpose of this book was just to shock and create controversy rather than produce a meaningful or insightful piece. And for anyone who wrote that they were hoping this book was an insight into the female mind, OH PLEASE. Come on.

You should read a few pages of this book before buying it to make sure you can handle/ will enjoy the contents. You won't have to dig very far to discover the flavour of the book. Might suit male readers more... I'm not sure.

This is a coming of age story-complex but in this case the heroine is rebelling against the hygiene and female sexuality that her mother (and society) imposes on her. It's graphic and, as I said, would disgust even Sarah Silverman but it's a quick read and offers interesting insight to to a young female mind. Complete and graphic, it's also truthful. I would not, however, suggest reading this while eating.

A very interesting, revealing, and enlightening read. Not for the squeamish! A study of the insecure adolescent/young adult woman of today's world trying to negotiate the trauma of a parental divorce, her changing body, her budding sexuality, and using her sexuality to satisfy the need for a consistent parental figure. The story is set in a hospital where the main character is undergoing/has undergone a hemorrhoidectomy. Her cries for help directed at her parents and the other authority figures in her surroundings are a great psychological study. This book is worthy of being used as a teaching tool in Medical Schools and Psychiatry/Psychology training programs. Highly recommended, again for the non-squeamish!

Everyone says that this book is super gross. Honestly, I wasn't grossed out or amused by any of it. When I wasn't bored, I was annoyed. The "gross-out" parts made me feel like the book was written by a teenage boy with ridiculous fantasies of what women do behind closed doors. The anecdotes Helen shared about things like spreading bacteria or what she did with avocado pits made me feel less like she was a strong woman with a "who-gives-a-crap" attitude, and more like she was just a perverted pre-teen. Everything Helen did sounded so over the top, as if she was in some sort of competition for the most sexually unconventional woman of all time.

I have read many reviews in which people sing this book's praises, calling it a triumph for the feminist movement. I don't understand that at all. Any woman can use explicit language to write a bunch of "gross" stuff about her body... this is nothing special.

It is a depressing to read many of the reviews posted here for this very good book. I feel sorry for those people so lacking in sophistication and intellect that they see this book as nothing more than 'pornographic' and 'disgusting'. To those men who bought it hoping to be 'turned on' and have expressed themselves disappointed, you represent all about the male sex that embarasses me - shallow, immature and simple. To those who think that this book is, or is meant to be, titillating and erotic: the joke is on you.

Indeed, the graphic, crude descriptions in this book are a sideshow and not what it is ultimately about: thankfully, some of the reviewers here have the intelligence to grasp this. It is about mental illness, in both the main character and her family. It is about the terrible damage done to children by abusive MOTHERS. That is the taboo exposed here: abuse perpetrated by mothers, both physical and psychological. Helen Memel is a pitiful, vulnerbale, psychologically damaged and very lonely human being who would rather take anyone to bed with her than be alone. It is not the gory scenes that moves one most of all, even if, astonoshingly, these scenes are the only thing many readers are capable of registering and distilling form the book. No, what moves one most is the internal suffering of this young women, the attempted murder of her brother by her mother, the harm done by the divorce of her parents and her longing for them to be reunited, her sterilisation and her self-hate. Yes, I appreciate that a facet of this book is the honest, no-holds-barred description of sexual body parts and female sexuality and that some will find that aspect to be refreshing. It is clearly also, in parts, meant to be humerous and funny (another aspect apparently missed by many). However, the 'dreams' and imaginings of gas in the air, the 'dreams' of her mother cutting off her eyelashes in her sleep and the hints of much worse things done, buried deep in her subconscious and driving her destructive behaviour, are what shocks most of all. It should be obvious to all that her extreme behaviour and actions are a manifestation of her subconscious anger towards her mother, representing rebellion and enormous anger.

Easily the most repulsive thing I've ever read, and I like splatterpunk. I thought Palahniuk's Guts was funny and laughed at Kevin Smith's hemmerhoid stories.

However, if there are any perks to modern civilization that separates us from apes, it's hygiene.

"Abjection" is a term used in horror a lot that explains the disgust reaction toward human waste: excretory filth, secretions, and corpses.

This book, I guess, is being celebrated as a feminist masterpiece, because it rejects Victorian mores about... feminine cleanliness. Semi-autobiographical, it breaks all those rules.

I sincerely hope it's not intended as a guidebook, because those rules are there for a reason. Yes, make friends with your vagina. Don't overclean it, but keep it clean. Smell is good, but it should smell good.

by creating a protagonist with nasty and excessive habits, sexual and non-sexual, and a painful physical failing, a character in need or already in the care of a physician, charlotte roche writes a novel philip roth might had written were he a woman in his 30s.

roth somewhere said that everything he writes he strains through the works of kafka, no surprise coming from the novelist who gave us one of his most kafka inspired writings, The Breast. however, in roche's fiction we're not privileged to a transformation.

the body part troubling eighteen year old helen memel is her anus. and not only her hemorrhoids which she describes, as she describes whatever is at hand, in minute detail, but, specifically, an infected lesion inside her anus requiring excision. helen asks robin, her male nurse: 'Do they stretch your [ ] open wide enough to fit multiple hands into it?' 'Yes, I'm afraid so. That will be the source of most of the pain when the anesthesia wears off in a few minutes.'

the operation and aftermath finds her confined to the hospital, mostly her room, mostly her bed, in the theme of kafka's enclosed spaces, where, like portnoy, but without the psychologist, memel pours out her story to an invisible listener, the reader, in a voice reminiscent of salinger's holden caulfield. and like roth's mickey sabbath, helen memel ends her story with an act of transgression without revelation -- unless helen's moment of acceptance that her parents are in control of their own lives suffices as an intimation that childhood has to end; though, i suspect that's not how helen leaves the hospital.

also metaphor, represented by two symbols, helen's tush and her hobby of growing avocado trees, further elevates Wetlands to intelligent fiction.

disgustingly funny.

I read the reviews and controversy is, for me, attractive. I find myself bored by Helen and unmoved by her brazen attempt to get the attention of her parents. The theme is transparent and poorly organized and written by someone who shouldn't be encouraged to try again.
I strongly recommend that you pass on this work. But if you are inclined to buy it, just write to me and I'll send it to you and spare your hard-earned money, even if you waste your limited time reading it. That is the best I can do except to say that if you start reading it and have an inclination to stop, give into it; it gets more and more boring as you go through the novel.