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Wetlands  By  cover art

Wetlands

By: Charlotte Roche
Narrated by: Pippa Jayne
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Publisher's summary

With more than one million copies sold in Germany and rights snapped up in 27 countries, Wetlands is the sexually and anatomically explicit novel that is changing the conversation about female identity and sexuality around the world.

Helen Memel is an outspoken 18-year-old, whose childlike stubbornness is offset by a precocious sexual confidence. She begins her story from a hospital bed, where she’s slowly recovering from an operation and lamenting her parents’ divorce. To distract herself, Helen ruminates on her past sexual adventures in increasingly uncomfortable detail, taking the listen on a sensational journey through Helen’s body and mind. Punky alienated teenager, young woman reclaiming her body from the tyranny of repressive hygiene (women mustn’t smell, excrete, desire), bratty smartass, vulnerable, 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.

As Helen constantly blurs the line between celebration, provocation, and dysfunction in her relationship with her body, Roche exposes the double bind of female sexuality, delivering a compulsively listenable and fearlessly intimate manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the repercussions of family trauma.

©2008 DuMont Bucherverlag, Cologne (Germany). Translation copyright 2009 by Tim Mohr. Recorded by arrangement with Grove/Atlantic, Inc. (P)2014 Audible Inc.
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: Erotica

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What listeners say about Wetlands

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Saturated with shameless laughs!

It's unfiltered rawness is laid fully exposed for the entire world to see, yet it feels like it was intimately written for you only.

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1 person found this helpful

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loved it!

bought this book out of curiosity...was surprisingly good...like, really good (still a weird read though..)...

Also...the narrator's voice is amazing... :)

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Strange but captivating.

The overall performance was fantastic, and I found Roche's descriptions of life's sticky, drippy, disgusting bodies impressive.

I'm not sure I grasp all of the metaphors in the piece, but many are on the tip of my brain. As with the story our lives begin and end in a hospital -- and a large chunk of time is spent dealing with our bodies . . . and hiding our secretions from others.

It's strange now to consider other fiction that seems to forget that its characters have bodies at all.

A very interesting book, that will make you smile at how much we hide from others . . . and how much pain their can be in life . . . and how gross we all are!

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A drinking game I just thought of....

Listen to this audio book and take a shot whenever she says "pussy" or "smegma" . You won't be conscious by Chapter 3. Loved it.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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All About the Fluids

This story leaves no bodily fluid unconsidered. The descriptions are graphic, and there are definitely some parts that made me feel uncomfortable (due to the "ick factor"), but overall, I enjoyed listening. It's the first-person narrative and the charming personality of the main character that keeps this book from being truly vulgar. The reader gives a good performance, although she doesn't quite manage to portray the youthfulness of the 18-year-old main character. Overall, this was an enjoyable listening experience.

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A Self-help book it is not

For the past few months, I've been reading lots of self-help books, business books, history, and bio. But after a while, you can only take so much of the good and powerful stories of life-you need something opposite for a change.
You've figured it out by now this book is sexual, slimy, and gross. For fun, I read some of the squeamish reviews crying about it on Amazon.com. I'll admit, there were parts that grossed me out, but also there were parts that had me laughing very hard.
Here's the thing, it's original. Regardless of parts that might have made me uncomfortable, it's a unique and distinguished voice. The character leaped off the page (or the app, I guess). So, I really liked it for that fact because it did what a 'novel' should do, which is... well... be novel.
So, if farts, the word pussy, and talk of vulgar sex bothers you, don't read it. What I kept thinking was it's like what Marla Singer from the book Fight Club would have written. If that sounds like it's up your alley, buy it and don't look back. If you're the type offended by stuff, skip.

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Book is so good it made me uncomfortable

The book was well written and the narrator brought it to life. I loved it. As of Helen she is truly twisted and I hope people don’t really do the things she described… Gross !

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    2 out of 5 stars
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gross

If you are averse to the eating of boogers this is probably not the book for you. if you are looking for some exposure therapy relavant to all the grossness of the human body, this might be valuable. I was fine with all the sex stuff in the first part of the book but the eating of nose boogers and vagina hair gooo was just too much for me and I stopped listening.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Truly foul

If you like to listen to someone talk about the most disgusting human body excretions and eating scabs, pus, vomit, and blackheads, this is for you.

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