We look forward to seeing you on your next visit to the library. Find a location near you.

Wetlands: A Novel
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Book Cover
Average Rating
Published:
Grove Atlantic 2010
Status:
Available from OverDrive
Description
A sexual, scatological, international sensation: “A cri de coeur against the oppression of a waxed, shaved, douched and otherwise sanitized women’s world” (Nicholas Kulish, The New York Times).
 
In the tradition of The Sexual Life of Catherine M. and Melissa P.’s 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, Charlotte Roche’s debut novel—which sold more than a million copies in Germany alone—exposes the double bind of female sexuality, delivering a compulsively readable and fearlessly intimate manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the repercussions of family trauma.
 
Helen Memel is an outspoken eighteen-year-old, whose childlike stubbornness is offset by a precocious sexual confidence. From a hospital bed, where she’s recovering from an operation and lamenting her parents’ divorce, Helen ruminates on her past sexual and physical adventures in “a headlong dash through every crevice and byproduct—both physical and psychological—of Helen’s body and mind” (The New York Times).
 
Punky alienated teenager, young woman reclaiming her body from the tyranny of repressive hygiene (women mustn’t smell, excrete, desire), bratty smartass, lonely daughter, shock merchant, and pleasure seeker—Helen is all of these things and more, and her frequent attempts to assert her maturity ultimately prove just how fragile, confused, and young she truly is.
Also in This Series
Formats
Adobe EPUB eBook
Works on all eReaders (except Kindles), desktop computers and mobile devices with reading apps installed.
Kindle Book
Works on Kindles and devices with a Kindle app installed.
OverDrive Read
Need Help?
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
More Like This
Other Editions and Formats
More Copies In LINK+
Loading LINK+ Copies...
More Details
Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
02/09/2010
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780802199928
ASIN:
B008UX8JWA
Reviews from GoodReads
Loading GoodReads Reviews.
Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Charlotte Roche. (2010). Wetlands: A Novel. Grove Atlantic.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Charlotte Roche. 2010. Wetlands: A Novel. Grove Atlantic.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Charlotte Roche, Wetlands: A Novel. Grove Atlantic, 2010.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Charlotte Roche. Wetlands: A Novel. Grove Atlantic, 2010.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
Copy Details
LibraryOwnedAvailable
Shared Digital Collection11
Staff View
Grouped Work ID:
44f3175d-ea93-12f8-a2d9-5b8e33993a47
Go To Grouped Work
Needs Update?:
No
Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 18:58:48
Date Updated:
Jul 01, 2023 09:43:57
Last Metadata Check:
Apr 21, 2024 10:45:08
Last Metadata Change:
Aug 19, 2023 08:18:56
Last Availability Check:
Apr 21, 2024 10:45:11
Last Availability Change:
Mar 02, 2024 05:07:50
Last Grouped Work Modification Time:
Apr 24, 2024 02:13:21

OverDrive Product Record

images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2363-1/{6DEEDD97-7E2C-4009-9FB9-35ADDB00BF22}IMG100.JPG
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2363-1/{6DEEDD97-7E2C-4009-9FB9-35ADDB00BF22}IMG200.JPG
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2363-1/{6DEEDD97-7E2C-4009-9FB9-35ADDB00BF22}IMG150.JPG
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2363-1/{6DEEDD97-7E2C-4009-9FB9-35ADDB00BF22}IMG400.JPG
        • type: image/jpeg
formats
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780802199928
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • identifiers:
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B008UX8JWA
      • name: Kindle Book
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780802199928
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • id: ebook-overdrive
otherFormatIdentifiers
      • type: ISBN
      • value: 9780802144690
mediaType
eBook
primaryCreator
    • role: Author
    • name: Charlotte Roche
isOwnedByCollections
True
title
Wetlands
dateAdded
2017-06-03T01:47:00Z
contentDetails
      • href: https://link.overdrive.com?websiteID=141&titleID=1275937
      • type: text/html
      • account:
          • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
          • id: 1151
sortTitle
Wetlands A Novel
crossRefId
1275937
subtitle
A Novel
id
6DEEDD97-7E2C-4009-9FB9-35ADDB00BF22
starRating
3.9

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain
False
formats
      • fileName: Wetlands_9780802199928_1275937
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 2399584
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780802199928
      • rights:
            • type: Copying
            • value: 0
            • type: Printing
            • value: 0
            • type: Lending
            • value: 0
            • type: ReadAloud
            • value: 1
            • type: ExpirationRights
            • value: 0
      • name: Adobe EPUB eBook
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-epub-adobe
      • onSaleDate: 2/9/2010
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/wetlands-6deedd?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: Wetlands_1275937
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 0
      • identifiers:
            • type: ASIN
            • value: B008UX8JWA
      • name: Kindle Book
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-kindle
      • onSaleDate: 2/9/2010
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/wetlands-6deedd?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
      • fileName: Wetlands_9780802199928_1275937
      • partCount: 0
      • fileSize: 0
      • identifiers:
            • type: ISBN
            • value: 9780802199928
      • name: OverDrive Read
      • isReadAlong: False
      • id: ebook-overdrive
      • onSaleDate: 2/9/2010
      • samples:
            • source: From the book
            • formatType: ebook-overdrive
            • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/wetlands-6deedd?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
creators
      • role: Author
      • fileAs: Roche, Charlotte
      • bioText: Thirty-year-old Charlotte Roche, born in High Wycombe but raised in Germany, has been a recognizable face in her adopted home country since she started working as a presenter on Viva, the German equivalent of MTV, in the mid-1990s. She went on to write and present programs and late-night talk shows for Arte and ZDF, and won the highly respected Grimme Prize for television in 2004.
      • name: Charlotte Roche
imprint
Grove Press
publishDate
2010-02-09T00:00:00-05:00
isOwnedByCollections
True
title
Wetlands
fullDescription
A sexual, scatological, international sensation: “A cri de coeur against the oppression of a waxed, shaved, douched and otherwise sanitized women’s world” (Nicholas Kulish, The New York Times).
 
In the tradition of The Sexual Life of Catherine M. and Melissa P.’s 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, Charlotte Roche’s debut novel—which sold more than a million copies in Germany alone—exposes the double bind of female sexuality, delivering a compulsively readable and fearlessly intimate manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the repercussions of family trauma.
 
Helen Memel is an outspoken eighteen-year-old, whose childlike stubbornness is offset by a precocious sexual confidence. From a hospital bed, where she’s recovering from an operation and lamenting her parents’ divorce, Helen ruminates on her past sexual and physical adventures in “a headlong dash through every crevice and byproduct—both physical and psychological—of Helen’s body and mind” (The New York Times).
 
Punky alienated teenager, young woman reclaiming her body from the tyranny of repressive hygiene (women mustn’t smell, excrete, desire), bratty smartass, lonely daughter, shock merchant, and pleasure seeker—Helen is all of these things and more, and her frequent attempts to assert her maturity ultimately prove just how fragile, confused, and young she truly is.
reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        January 12, 2009
        Roche's explicit and provocative debut about an 18-year-old girl with a very active sex life was a bona fide sensation in Germany upon its publication earlier this year. Helen Memel, hospitalized for the treatment of an infected anal lesion, spends much of the novel in the hospital scheming on how to reunite her divorced parents. Between visits by hospital staff and her family, Helen shares her vast sexual experience, details how she rebels against her mother's uptightness by reveling in excretions, and maintains a high level of curiosity about her own body (and, of course, others'). Among the graphic sex scenes and tidbits on her avocado tree–growing hobby, Helen dishes gnarly stories about leaving a used tampon in an elevator, dribbling a trail of urine from the bathroom to her bed and eating scabs. Through Helen's mix of eroticism and profanity, Memel attacks conventional views on women's hygiene, sexuality and the definition of femininity. Though there isn't much plot—it feels largely like a buffet of filth and screwing—Helen's take on life is enough to keep the pages turning.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        February 1, 2009
        English translation of a German TV personality's sexually graphic first novel.

        "As far back as I can remember, I've had hemorrhoids." With this opening line, Roche declares her intention to omit no physiological detail. Readers may take it as a frank come-on or a kindhearted warning, depending on their interest in exploring aspects of the female nether regions that are seldom described outside of hardcore pornography or the gynecologist's office. Eighteen-year-old protagonist Helen Memel narrates the entire novel from a hospital bed, where she is confined after the aforementioned rectal unpleasantness contributes to a terrible shaving mishap. While convalescing after emergency surgery, Helen entertains herself by reflecting on her unhappy family, reminiscing about her sexual adventures and tenderly examining all—all—of her body's excrescences. Indeed, meditations on cervical mucus and related substances make up most of this slender novel, and this, aside from Roche's fame (she's a presenter on the German equivalent of MTV), is the reason why her novel has become an international cause scandale. Abroad, it has been celebrated as an empowering depiction of sexual independence, and a superficial reading would support such judgment. But Helen is hardly a feminist heroine. She is sexually precocious but emotionally stunted. She is afraid to be alone, and, while she may revel in her various secretions, she is ultimately no more respectful of her body than the women who groom themselves into a state of profound unnaturalness. Indeed, Helen's claims that her own filthiness is a political act seem more bratty than noble. When she spits in a glass of mineral water and offers it to a candy striper, it is not the act of a revolutionary; it is the act of a petulant teen.

        Provocatively nasty but intellectually empty.

        (COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        February 1, 2009
        Tales of family dysfunction are a dime a dozen, so another book mining divorce and its aftermath is hardly compelling. What's different about this work is that its 18-year-old protagonist, Helen Memel, copes with domestic fissures by engaging in compulsive, random sexual hook-ups. Using language explicit enough to make the Mayflower Madame blush, Roche recounts Helen's exploits and proclivities. Nothing is left to the imaginationand that means nothing. The book's sassy if confessional tone introduces a 21st-century Lolita whose bravado is slowly chipped away during a prolonged hospitalization, which gives her time to reflect on the traumas she's lived through. It's intense stuff, especially since Helen is full of both sage wisdom and childish neediness. When it was initially released in Germany, this book reportedly caused a sensation, leading to sales of more than one million copies. While American readers may be put off by the text's sexual brazenness, they should get over their puritanical squeamishness. If they don't, they'll miss a novel that is simultaneously exhilarating, moving, sad, and scary. Every adult fiction collection should stock it. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 12/08.]Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn

        Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

popularity
23
links
    • self:
        • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/6deedd97-7e2c-4009-9fb9-35addb00bf22/metadata
        • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
id
6deedd97-7e2c-4009-9fb9-35addb00bf22
starRating
3.9
images
    • cover:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/2363-1/{6DEEDD97-7E2C-4009-9FB9-35ADDB00BF22}IMG100.JPG
        • type: image/jpeg
    • thumbnail:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/2363-1/{6DEEDD97-7E2C-4009-9FB9-35ADDB00BF22}IMG200.JPG
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover150Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/2363-1/{6DEEDD97-7E2C-4009-9FB9-35ADDB00BF22}IMG150.JPG
        • type: image/jpeg
    • cover300Wide:
        • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/2363-1/{6DEEDD97-7E2C-4009-9FB9-35ADDB00BF22}IMG400.JPG
        • type: image/jpeg
isPublicPerformanceAllowed
False
languages
      • code: en
      • name: English
subjects
      • value: Fiction
      • value: Literature
publishDateText
02/09/2010
otherFormatIdentifiers
      • type: ISBN
      • value: 9780802144690
mediaType
eBook
shortDescription
A sexual, scatological, international sensation: “A cri de coeur against the oppression of a waxed, shaved, douched and otherwise sanitized women’s world” (Nicholas Kulish, The New York Times).
 
In the tradition of The Sexual Life of Catherine M. and Melissa P.’s 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, Charlotte Roche’s debut novel—which sold more than a million copies in Germany alone—exposes the double bind of female sexuality, delivering a compulsively readable and fearlessly intimate manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the repercussions of family trauma.
 
Helen Memel is an outspoken eighteen-year-old, whose childlike stubbornness is offset by a precocious sexual confidence. From a hospital bed, where she’s recovering from an operation and lamenting her parents’ divorce, Helen ruminates on her past sexual and physical adventures in “a headlong...
sortTitle
Wetlands A Novel
crossRefId
1275937
subtitle
A Novel
publisher
Grove Atlantic
bisacCodes
      • code: FIC019000
      • description: Fiction / Literary