Charlotte Roche's Wetlands is being touted as the next big thing in feminist literature. The blurb on the back of the book compares Roche's voice to an iconoclastic mix of J.D. Salinger, William S. Burroughs and — here's the kicker — feminist juggernaut Germaine Greer. On reading a single paragraph of the book, however, it is perfectly evident that this is nothing more than a big publicity stunt. And this could easily be said of the entire book.

It is offensive to read reviews that call Wetlands either feminist or literature. It is actually neither. What then, is it? It's nothing more than the journal of a very sick, mentally disturbed and incredibly insecure child. And what is it about? It's about nothing at all. There is barely any plot, no real story and it's essentially a very thinly veiled attempt at shock jock publicity.

Roche's narrator, Helen, is an 18-year-old in a hospital for an operation on her hemorrhoids. That's the entire premise of the book — without any sarcasm or exaggeration. Helen spends the entire duration of the book reminiscing about and reveling in her body's muck. She likes to 'recycle' bodily secretions, she says. So she chews on scabs, smears smegma behind her ears... any more details may not be for the faint of heart.

Wetlands is a never ending list of sickening things this girl does, and thinks about while she waits to recover from surgery. Besides the disturbing pleasure she takes in her body's wastes, her only other thought is finding a way to reunite her divorced parents, preferably over her hospital bed. Is that a sweet little foil to all the other revolting ideas?

No. Rather, it is a clear indication that this book is nothing but a cliché, albeit a cliché covered in descriptions of various bodily fluids and secretions. This so-called feminist heroine is nothing more than a simpering child who is wounded so deeply by her parents' divorce that all she wants is for them to get back together. And that doesn't sound very iconoclastic after all.

In fact, once one works their way past the various sticky substances and disgusting diatribes, it becomes clear that Roche is simply piling cliché upon cliché. Not just does Helen want her parents to get back together, when faced with the reality of having to face life as an adult she admits she is incapable and requires being saved by a conveniently available male nurse. Yes, a knight in shining scrubs, as it were. Could the novel be any more clichéd?

The Guardian's review for Wetlands says 'This is not a beautiful or perfect book, but an enterprising one, and its cumulative effect is admirable through Helen's all-out absorption in her physical self, her encyclopedic demonstration of its properties, we glimpse how deeply attached we are to our bodies'.

Yes, that much is true. But what disturbs me the most is that this book is being touted as a feminist breakthrough. Yes, women should lay claim to their own bodies. Yes, feminist theory tells us to love ourselves, to accept, respect and cherish our bodies, our bio-rhythms and our hormones — just as we accept our personalities. But while women should be aware of and connected to their physical selves, is there any need for them to be connected to their body's wastes? Wetlands is not a 'don't shave your armpits/burn your bra/get down and dirty kind of feminism — it's just a very graphic and trite little collection of someone's fetishes. Someone who is engaged in a rather pointless rebellion against hygiene. And of course it's because Helen's mother was a clean freak. Now isn't that insightful.

 Roche goes just too far in Wetlands — she wants very much to gain respect through shock and horror, but all she gains is shock and horror. And her shock jock techniques can only get her so far. She may have sold over a million copies of her debut novel, but she's not going to be winning any literary prizes for this.

In order for this book to be truly effective, the reader has to believe that the narrator's body and its products are shocking. However, Helen is only human. We all may not revel in our body's wastes the way she does, but all our bodies produce them and so Helen's are nothing special.

Roche tries very hard to be as disgusting as possible, but she's still not as shocking as someone like Chuck Palahnuik. While Palahnuik, in work like Haunted and even to an extent the better known Fight Club, tends to shock his readers using images and incidents that are imaginatively possible yet unlikely, Roche simply has very little imagination. She cannot get beyond bodily fluids — Helen simply does not believe in hygiene. There are millions of dirty people in this world and being unhygienic doesn't make them special. So why is Charlotte Roche special? The answer is clear at least to me — she's not.

Wetlands
By Charlotte Roche
Fourth Estate, UK
ISBN 0007296703
240pp. £12.99