The Water Cure
"An extraordinary otherworldly debut... [Mackintosh] is writing the way that Sofia Coppola would shoot the end of the world: everything is luminous, precise, slow to the point of dread." --The Guardian The Handmaid's Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has lain the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter . Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave . Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world. But when their father, the only man they've ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day two men and a boy wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men? A haunting, riveting debut
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Three sisters, Grace, Lia, and Sky, are raised in isolation at a half-ruined hotel on a deserted island by their mother and a man they call King, who teaches them men outside are toxic and runs them through the water cure ritual. After King vanishes one morning, three men wash up on the beach below.
The Water Cure was longlisted for the 2018 Booker Prize and was a Granta Best of Young British Novelists selection for Sophie Mackintosh. It was her debut novel.
Yes. The Water Cure is widely cited as a defining feminist dystopian novel of the 2010s, alongside Red Clocks and The Power. Three sisters are raised on an isolated island to be protected from a toxic outside world dominated by men.
The Water Cure was written by Sophie Mackintosh, published in 2018 by Anchor.
The Water Cure is 288 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Water Cure takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
The Water Cure is a standalone novel by Sophie Mackintosh, not part of a series.
The Water Cure is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
