Some small thoughts on Wrecked, by Charlotte Roche

I have a note here I made a year or so ago while reading Charlotte Roche’s Wrecked. Like her other book Wetlands, this is a confronting story (though not as much. I don’t think I’ve read a more confronting book than Wetlands?) There is a tragedy at the heart of this book, and one detail is the telling of cooling a mother’s burned feet with Fanta (p146). For some reason I found this entirely heartbreaking. Another detail is of the female protagonist imagining her dead brothers alive, in the woods. Living on. Again, a small thing but very moving. Both details tell much about the main character.

I think her a beautiful writer. She reminds me of Krissy Kneen a little, in the way she writes about sex but also with her clean restrained prose. Dark stuff but utterly lovely.