The Water Cure

I finished this book and I just don't quite know how I feel about it - on many levels, I found it deeply disturbing in the way that a lot of good literature is disturbing. The novel features three sisters who have grown up with their parents on an island separate from the world, which they believe to be toxic, especially to weak female bodies. Their world is up-ended when a group of men are stranded on the shore of their home. The interactions that result bring the sisters' long-held beliefs into questions and they each struggle to come to terms with how their world has changed. I can't say I liked this book, but I will say that it was interesting and I'll certainly be mulling it over in my mind for some time.

This story is a metaphor for... something. The inherent violence we all harbor inside us? The idea that relations between men and women can never be peaceful? I honestly don't know. The writing is lovely, lyrical and haunting but too veiled for me. Are men really a threat to women in the outside world, or is the sickness a metaphor? Or is it just that Grace, Lia, and Sky's parents are incredibly manipulative and abusive (physicallyand psychologically)? Although some things become clear(er) by the end of the book, much is left in obscurity.

This novel tells the story of three young women living on a Scottish island with their parents. They have spent their lives there and know that off the island is a world where men hurt women, the air is toxic and they would surely die. Living in an isolated, decaying hotel, protected by the rites and tests designed to keep them wary and safe, they find various ways to survive. The oldest, Grace, has been rewarded for her diligence with a swelling stomach while Lia, the middle daughter, cuts herself for the good of all of them. Their father leaves one day, and then the two men and a boy show up on their island.

This is an odd and dreamy dystopian novel where the reader is left in the same information-deprived limbo as the three women. show more They're trying to survive, but what they've been taught might not actually be true and their father was perhaps not the protector they believed him to be. I read this book desperately wanting more information about the world this novel exists in, but by the end of the story, I had just enough to satisfy me, without spelling out everything. Sophie MacKintosh writes evocatively about the inner lives of these isolated women, but if you're looking for clear resolutions, they remain tantalizingly just out of sight. show less

Trigger warnings: domestic violence, sexual assault, child sexual assault, abuse, child abuse, rape, vomit, self-harm

The Water Cure follows three sisters, all unreliable narrators, throughout their lives isolated on an island as big changes suddenly start happening in their lives. During their childhood, they were abused and raised to believe cult-like things about the world and, specifically, the men who inhabit it. After their father's death and the sudden appearance of two unknown men and a young boy, the sisters have to figure out what their new life is going to be like.

The book consistently uses the black-and-white, us-versus-them mentality, specifically that all women are victims and all men are evil beings who seek to hurt women. show more While from a reader's perspective it is very easy to see that real life is not black-and-white, we only see this world through the sister's eyes. This was the only kind of mentality they were taught, and we are able to see how this mentality hurts them throughout the novel in various ways.

Despite being a very depressing novel, it is extremely well-written. The prose is beautiful and every aspect of the story is intentional.

While it would have been nice to see the girls recovering from the abuse they suffered and re-learn ways to view the world, I did like the messy ending. Not only did it show that recovering from these types of abuse is extremely difficult, it also showed how not everything needs to be or even can be resolved with a neat little bow. show less

Three sisters, Grace, Lia, and Sky, live with their parents on an island in a near future toxic world. Their father, King, has disappeared and their mother continues his “teachings,” which includes painful rituals designed to make them “stronger.” The bottom line is that their parents have been abusing them under the guise of love and protection. The daughters have been taught to fear men, so when two men and a boy wash up on their shores, the situation worsens.

Needless to say, this is a disturbing story. It is told primarily by eldest daughter Grace and middle daughter Lia, and the reader will soon realize the abuse has taken a toll on their mental stability. Their isolation has caused an inability to relate to others in a show more natural way. The prose is poetic, in stark contrast to the horror of the story. It reminds me of a fairy tale (but definitely not for children). It prompts many questions and provides few answers.

I presume the intent is to impugn the patriarchy by portraying what it would be like to lump “all men” together into a stereotype (similar to lumping “all women’ together as is more typical in our society). But it comes across as more of a portrait of an immensely dysfunctional family that basically has turned into a cult. It is not a book for everyone (and certainly wasn’t for me). If you are a sensitive reader, I would avoid it. show less

Okay, WOW. There are so many layers to this novel, so many echoes of the same questions I've been asking myself for decades, about what it means to be a woman and how/if I could ever tell if that meaning was authentic or just handed to me by a male-dominated culture, about what it means to be both powerful and vulnerable, about how easy it is to be used. I feel like turning it back over and reading it again right away. It's even awesomer that this is one of the books my husband got me for Christmas.

‘’We would all still love each other, but what it meant was: if there was a burning fire, if two sisters were stuck in the inferno and they were screaming a name, the only right thing would be to pick the one the iron dictated to save. It is important to ignore any contrary instinct of your traitor heart. We were quite used to that.’’

Had this been a fairytale, it would have started like this: There once was a couple who had three daughters and they lived on an isolated island. ‘’King’’ was the father’s name and Grace, Lia and Sky were taught that he was their only protection from creatures that wanted to harm them. The creatures were called ‘’men’’ and he was a man but it didn’t matter. He alone knew what was show more good for the family. Because the girls were weak, fragile, easy to fall ill from the sickness carried by the outside world. However, women were welcomed to the island. Women who were frightened and wounded. Women who should accept rebirth through fear and water. But they weren’t there when the master of the house died. They weren’t there when three men were washed ashore. They weren’t there when the daughters had to choose…

But this is not a fairytale. This is a story of isolation, exploitation, intentional fear and violence…

And what about the Mother, one may ask. A mother is not a mother when she oppresses her children and obeys a madman obsessively, violently, in a household where iron determines who is to be loved most. When she doesn’t protect her children from paranoia, when she blatantly, maliciously threatens them, the ‘’mother’’ becomes a worse danger than all the men in the world. She becomes a monster.Terror doesn’t come from women or men. It comes from therapies initiated by disturbed people who exploit the ordeal of women to serve their Messiah complex and their heinous inclinations. Terror comes from ignorance when a young girl falls for the handsome stranger.

Mackintosh plays well with stereotypes and the themes of uncertainty and a vague external threat. The extracts from the Welcome Book of one of the ‘’guests’’ of the island, a woman who has suffered abuse, talk of an invisible threat coming from a man. Who is he? The answer will be found at the end of the book. She is haunted by his presence, abused by his shadow. Who are the other women who refuse to support her? And then, two men and a young boy are washed ashore, their intentions suspicious from the start. In these pages, you will find an array of some of the most hate-worthy characters you’ll ever meet. I wanted to murder half of the cast and I suppose this is a token of the writer’s powerful writing.

‘’I collect a long fingertip of dust from the lip of a vase, a solitary object on the mantelpiece in the hall. It is empty except for a wasp dying in its own sound, vibrating dully against the porcelain. Suffer, I mouth at it.’’

Mackintosh’s prose is like a suffocating summer afternoon that carries the anticipation of an almost metaphysical terror. Lies, deceit, delusion create a claustrophobic environment. At times, the writing is so raw and violent that even I started feeling extremely uncomfortable and this doesn’t happen often. The violence between the two older sisters touches the boundaries of madness, a result of their abnormal upbringing. This is the only way for me to explain Lia’s hysterics that bothered me quite a lot throughout the story. I suppose this is an example of the animal instincts we all carry inside, intensified by isolation and lack of education. Another issue I faced was the dialogue which came in contrast with the exquisite prose. Especially the interactions between Lia and Llew were so bad it was an actual physical torture for me to read. Thankfully, dialogue is limited in the novel and I wasn’t tempted to subtract a star because of it.

No, this isn’t mind-blowing Literature. We have read similar books and more will come out in the future. But it is a marvelous novel, beautiful in its bleakness and desperation, the prose exquisite and mysterious like a sultry summer evening, the last chapters are ferocious and devastating, worthy of 5 stars alone. It balances Dystopian Fiction elements (although the novel has nothing to do with the genre and it is wrong to be marketed like that…) and a very realistic, in-depth study of the harm we can do to ourselves and to others.

Even if it is a candidate for the most insufferable cast of characters, The Water Cure shows that monsters can be found in both sexes. Women and men can become oppressive, dangerous, destructive. There are no saviours but ourselves in these troubled times. Trusting in our strength, aided by education and companionship, are the ways to distance ourselves from populists and tyrants. Building fortresses against imaginary threats that possibly serve twisted purposes only leads to destruction and we have two World Wars and countless hostilities to prove this.

‘’One day they will overwhelm us, water molding our carpets and warping the parquet, leaving tidemarks on the wallpapers. But I hope to be long gone by then.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ show less