Baby Got Books

Wet Marshy Land Mass Area

Fitting, in a way, that I pick a time around the passing of British novelist JG Ballard to even remotely attempt to tackle Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands. Like Ballard’s Crash (admittedly the only thing of his that I’ve ever read, and, for me, it’s enough), Wetlands uses base humanity (as in lust, desire, bodily functions, bodily fluids) to convey something more, something deeper. Unlike Crash…um, there’s no hot car-crash sex. Ok, so that’s a huge and distinct difference, but give me this one.

Wetlands is an infamous-in-basically-every-country story about a young girl-Helen Memel-who is hospitalized for, erm, an anal lesion. And, given the fact that a one-sentence summary of the plot can’t even come out without the phrase “anal lesion,” you have an idea about exactly how explicit Roche’s novel is.

Much has been made about Wetlands and its explicit, rated triple-x content, consisting entirely of the narrator’s musings on her sex life, her body and its functions. Within the first three pages of the book, there’s the most graphic, skin-greening description of Helen’s hemorrhoids that…well, granted, it’s the only literary description of hemorrhoids I’ve ever had this (mis)fortune of reading, but it, out of the gate, sets a tone of topics and language used to discuss said topics that inevitably will find many a reader who picks up the book out of morbid curiosity closing the cover before they ever see page number 5 (or possibly anything past 2).

And that’s an unfortunate thing.

What Wetlands masks with its immediate gross-out is an absurdly moving and painfully self-aware narrative of mental illness and need for emotional validation that’s as moving as it is grotesque. Helen Memel is an unforgettable, tormented and lost every-youth, and Roche’s done an admirable job wrapping her in filth as a reflection of the deepest, darkest, nastiest desires of humanity. If the act of reading a book that is a completely immersive experience reflects quality of material, Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands, constantly inciting subconscious, guttural and visceral reactions from the reader, is of a high, high nature.

Some may disagree with me on this. Some may find Wetlands entirely too much to take to ever consider it “true literature.” To those naysayers, I simply suggest re-reading their copy of Ulysses and telling me it’s not 100% more disgusting than Wetlands-or, actually, just try some letters from Joyce to Nora on for size.

Those who run for the exits at the first sign of feces in Wetlands ends up missing out on a tender heart bearting what, underneath all the shi…ok, I’m not going to make that joke. But gah, I want to.