The Water Cure
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018
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3.8 • 16 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
BRITISH VOGUE 'STAR OF THE FUTURE'
INDEPENDENT BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE
'A gripping, sinister fable' Margaret Atwood (via Twitter)
'An extraordinary debut - otherworldly, luminous, precise' Guardian
'Bold, inventive, haunting... With shades of Margaret Atwood and Eimear McBride, you'll be bowled over by it' Stylist
Grace, Lia and Sky live in an abandoned hotel, on a sun-bleached island, beside a poisoned sea. Their parents raised them there to keep them safe, to make them good. The world beyond the water is contaminated and men are the contamination. But one day three strangers wash ashore - men who stare at the sisters hungrily, helplessly. Men who bring trouble.
This ebook edition includes an exclusive extract from Sophie Mackintosh's gripping second novel, Blue Ticket, which is out now.
*****
'A feminist fable set by the sea, a female Lord of the Flies. It felt like a book I'd been waiting to read for a long time' Emma Jane Unsworth
'Visceral, hypnotic, with one of my favourite endings I've read in a long while' The Pool
'An unsettling dark fantasy... [It] lingers long after the final page' Daily Telegraph
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mackintosh's intense, ambitious debut, longlisted for the Man Booker, evokes a feminist dystopia where three sisters live in isolation meant to protect them from a toxic world that has become particularly dangerous for women. At an unspecified time in the future, global warming and pollution have poisoned the planet, making men more violent and women vulnerable. One couple, King and Mother, choose to raise their three daughters surrounded by sea and barbwire; their only visitors are women seeking therapies like the water cure (near-drowning to fortify against toxins and fear). Mother teaches her daughters caustic 20-something Grace, touch-hungry teenage Lia, and their youngest, Sky to suppress emotions, love only each other, and prepare for the worst. Then King disappears, and two men and a boy wash ashore. Mother shows her daughters how to use a pistol before she too disappears. Grace, Lia, and Sky are left to fend for themselves as the men grow impatient, proprietary, and threatening. The sisters' impressionistic narratives, presented solo and in chorus, show Lia's self-mutilation in close-up while the world disorder is described indirectly through its aftereffects. Mackintosh's gripping novel is vicious in its depiction of victimhood, vibrant when victims transform into warriors, and full of outrage at patriarchal power, environmental devastation, and the dehumanization of women.
