been there

okay, now it's done. i just finished wetlands. 

it didn't take me this long because i'm a slow reader - i'm not - but because the book is not something i would take with me to work and read in my lunchbreak. wouldn't have gotten to eat much then.

conclusion:  it wasn't as bad as i thought. it's charming in a way - in a sub-surface way it's a story of a dysfunctional family that might encounter a healthy breakthrough after the end of the book. the protagonist helen, in between recounting her different thoughts on hygene, sex, masturbation and her proctological affliction, dips carefully into family history, i.e. how she came home from school one day after her parents split up and found her mother on the kitchen floor, clutching her little brother, both drugged, the gas oven wide open and running. different problems of course arouse from this. a mother who is suicidal is only the most obvious one; but the most painful: why would the mother take her little brother, but not her? evidently, this has nothing to do with granting her a life. it must be something to do with not caring for her so much.

also, the protagonist nurtures the hope her parents might fall in love with each other again if reunited in the hospital room, so she has to try and stay in hospital as long as possible - because of course both parents are extra careful not to meet each other. spoiler: in the end she gives up this hope, enlightens her little brother as to why he hates hospitals, thus cracking open the one big subdued trauma haunting her family, and moves in with the sweet, tolerant and very caring nurse robin.

all in all, it's actually a sweet book, well written and entertaining. i did laugh out loud several times, and every once in a while i needed to take a break when it got to an especially gross point. these gross moment a different to every reader, i figure - to me it's a always to do with feeding on own-body-products. and our protagonist isn't shy of anything: from whence ever the liquid or crunchy, she puts it in her mouth.

regarding the meta-topic, namely the overexited hygene women are subject to in our modern world - she does take it over the top to make her point. i'm sure many of the things helen does to prove her very anal mother wrong are not really an issue for the author. but i think i get her point: i wasn't raised by such a mother, but i have in my life found some things not so big a health problem as my mum made me believe as a child. and concerning the very rich industry that's living on female hygene and sexual repressiveness - i agree. whether it is tampons, sanitary towels, shavers and epilators, or the pill: i think a lot of money is made with the hysteria of smelling, being dirty, unattractive and sexually unaffordable. i still prefer ready-made tampons to self-made ones, but for me sanitary napkins do not need extra wings or perfume. i will not wear one every day in my life just in case i get surprised by my period, and definitely not because of the mucus that happens to appear on the other days. don't laugh, i remember the bewildered question of my brother when i announced i was going to wear boxers for the rest of my life: "but how will you be wearing your sanitary napkins?" it appeared that his experience with women had him believe we all wear these things every day of our life. there are women out there that do! (of course, i don't wear boxers when i have my period...)

i'm also - as we're talking about it - one woman who has withdrawn from the power of the chemical industry. no, i do not take the pill - i have found a very adaequate substitution that will not make me feel depressed, will not make water gather in my thighs and that i do not have to think of every day even if i don't want to have sex. 

so helen: here's to you, sister!