WRECKED

A woman examines aspects of her life—from the mundane, to the erotic, to the tragic—in graphic detail.

Elizabeth Kiehl is a mother, wife, photographer, daughter, ex-wife (sort of), ex–wild child, confused feminist, militant atheist and survivor (in a sense). She tells her story in a first-person, stream-of-consciousness fashion and relates conversations with her therapist, trips with her husband to brothels and the devastating calamity that ripped her life into before and after with the same oddly engaging (in a train wreck sort of way) storytelling. There are moments of fascinating psychology, as well as deceptively muted visceral screams, and by the end of the book, one is not sure whether to admire, pity or detest Elizabeth. Roche’s shocking storyline covers three chronological days in Elizabeth’s life, with an intense amount of retrospection.

For some readers, the mesmerizing if unsettling narrative might be groundbreaking and sophisticated; for others, it will simply be disturbing and TMI.