Wrecked by Charlotte Roche

First published in German in 2011; published in translation by Grove (Black Cat) on May 7, 2013

The first several pages of Wrecked are devoted to the narrator's frank and detailed description of the steps she takes to give sexual pleasure to her husband. Elizabeth Kiehl's narration is alternately clinical and erotic, and occasionally touches upon the science and psychology and politics of sex. Readers who don't approve of graphic language will want to stay far away from Wrecked.

The sex is followed by a considerably less interesting discussion of cooking, which turns into a discussion of motherhood, from Elizabeth's perspective as both the daughter of a domineering mother and as the mother of an eight-year-old girl, the product of her first marriage. This leads to the story of how Elizabeth met her current husband (Georg), which leads to an analysis of the role sex plays in a marriage, which amounts to: love is just an excuse to have sex. Filling out organ donor cards (because love is intertwined with death) is the height of their romantic relationship. Elizabeth wants to have sex with a man who isn't her husband (but only with her husband's approval), a desire that provides what passes for dramatic tension in the novel: will she or won't she?

As the title suggests, Elizabeth is a wreck. She has panic attacks. She has body issues. She has odor issues. She has control issues. She is plagued by feelings of guilt. She hates her mother. She hates her stepmother. She has a father complex. She has worms (did we really need to know that?). She is rigidly opposed to change. She is "hostile to life." She often contemplates suicide. She's ambivalent about some of her husband's kinkier desires but she's unable to say "no." She fears that her husband (and every other man she knows) is a pedophile who will sexually abuse her daughter. She is always afraid that something bad is about to happen -- with some justification, given the bad things that have happened to her. According to her therapist, her hypersexuality temporarily displaces her fear. Therapy defines her.

When she's not recounting the tragedies that have comprised her life, Elizabeth reveals every thought that passes through her mind, from the environmental impact of dishwashing to corporal punishment to gray hair and breast size and the many ways in which she and everyone she knows might die. A character with this many tribulations and odd thoughts should be interesting, but the engaging aspects of Elizabeth's stream-of-consciousness narration are too often overshadowed by her tedious nature.

As I was reading Wrecked, I was trying to work out whether Charlotte Roche meant it to be a comedy. Parts of the novel are quite funny (including Elizabeth's interaction with her desperately needed therapist, with whom she discusses -- you guessed it -- her sexual fantasies), and at least some of the humor is clearly intentional. Other bits made me laugh because they were just so over-the-top -- like deciding which partner she and Georg should choose in a brothel (because she feels a need to give Georg everything he wants) or offering to show him her worms. I give Roche credit for her humor, which is the novel's redeeming value. On the other hand, the story's most dramatic moment, recounted from Elizabeth's memory, seems contrived, created only to add tragedy to Elizabeth's life. In fact, I came to believe that it was inserted into the story just to give Elizabeth something meaningful to talk about during therapy.

As a psychological study of an extreme case, Wrecked is moderately interesting, if a little creepy. As an exaggerated commentary on therapy and therapists, Wrecked has value. As an exploration of the relationship between sex and death, or a statement about feminism, or a complaint about the unfair expectations placed upon wives and mothers, or an illustration of a child's rebellion against a parent or an indictment of monogamy and double-standards ... well, that's all been done before in novels that make those points without lecturing the reader. Perhaps I should be sympathetic to Elizabeth despite (or because of) her maddening nature, but Roche only made me feel happy to have her out of my reading life when the novel ended. I appreciated some of what Roche is trying to do, and I enjoyed some of the comedy as well as a few of the less clinical descriptions of Roche's sexual adventures, but since the novel ultimately left me feeling wrecked, I can't recommend it.

NOT RECOMMENDED