This book was different from my usual read and that’s why I wanted to read it. Sometimes I find myself drawn to the same types of books so by reading this I was leaving my comfort zone.

The story of a father called King and his wife bringing up his 3 children on an Island away from the mainland and everything toxic!! Sometimes women appear damaged with tales of abuse, violence but mysteriously leave the Island cured.

It is beautifully written and very atmospheric, at times it is brutal and violent but mesmerising at the same time.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy in exchange for my review.

The Water Cure is beautifully written, visceral in a way that reminded me of The Edible Woman with an ethereal quality to build the isolated, dream-like atmosphere of the women's island.

Despite the slow pace of the book, I found myself oddly addicted to it, getting sucked into the cult-like nature of Grace, Lia and Sky's world. Partly this is down to the mystery of the story and whether we are to believe the tales their mother and King tell them or not, and partly this is down to the unreliable narrative voices guiding us through the novel. Because while these are women whose bodies are kept frail and weak, their minds and personalities are still their own - as shown through the multiple perspectives, which allow us to delve into their own voices.

A stunning, entrancing debut - can't wait for more from this author.

Straight away I knew something wasn’t right with this set up. It almost had a cult like feel to it. The various traditions and therapies the family partake it are not by any stretch of the imagination ‘normal’.

This book almost has a coming of age feel about it but not in the traditional sense as the girls have been so sheltered all their lives. Their childlike innocence is a stark contrast with their parents motives and it’s almost heart breaking that the girls believe the numerous ‘therapies’ their parents subject them to is in their minds just part of normal every day life.

Throughout the book there is mention of a time when other women used to come to the island to receive ‘the water cure’. However, it is never really explained why these woman don’t visit anymore. There are lots of other point’s that are never really full explained either, like why are the men bad? Is the world actually contaminated? Are their parents just delusional cult leaders?

I’ve read so many good things about this book, however, I feel like I may have just missed the point. Maybe it was the author’s intention to leave us purposefully in the dark about so many issues to leave us in the same position the girls would have been in. For me though, I personally prefer a book that if it is shrouded in mystery, as this one was, that there are enough clues or information for me as the reader to piece together the answers I want to finish the book having.

All in all though this is a haunting book with some beautiful prose. Despite much ambiguity, which i’m sure was intentional, I did enjoy the authors writing and it would not put me off reading any of her future work.

This is not a book I would normally go for. So when I was given the opportunity to read this I thought I would give it a go. It is of a ghostly, eerie kind of boom with 3 ladies - Liia, Grace and Sky. I felt really protective of them that I wanted to protect them and keep them safe throughout their battles.
This certainly sounds how sisterhood should be.
This book will not be to everyone's taste but it's worth giving it a go.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Books UK for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

Clever, ambiguous and haunting and it’s beautifully written. Builds good tension as the story unravels. Yet somehow it’s hard to root for any characters and it feels unoriginal/hackneyed at times perhaps? Still a really decent read.

Fantastic book - echoes of Lord of the Flies, 1984, King Lear and The Handmaid's Tale but somehow entirely of itself. In order to survive does the end always justify the means? A beautifully written novel about a dystopian existence in a maybe not too distant future(or recent past), an existence which the protagonists believe to be the best available.

The Water Cure is the debut novel of Sophie Mackintosh and has, at the time of my writing, been long listed for the 2018 Man Booker Prize, and deservedly so.

It is the story of…I don’t know. A sect? Refuge? Retreat? Cult? Fantasy? A failed utopia in a supposedly dystopian world? All of the above and then some…I think. I do not know what genre fits it…mystery mixed with philosophy perhaps. It is definitely the story of three sisters raised in isolation from the toxic outside world with rituals to protect, cleanse and heal. Anymore detail and I will spoil it for you.

Told in the voices of Grace, Lia and Sky (a device I especially love), it is written in the present tense, which I find always heightens the reader’s awareness of a character’s emotions and creates a sense of urgency. It also makes the reader feel involved.

This is not a quick “beach book” though I did read it quickly as I did not want to be away from it. The prose is beautiful, atmospheric with not a single word wasted. It is highly evocative; I held my breath at times to be silent. Light, ethereal, ghostly yet oh, so dark and menacing. Beautiful yet violent. Calm yet seething. Ms Mackintosh’s writing will hold you spellbound and leave you bereft, hopeful, defeated…just as the sisters felt. She is a skilled wordsmith indeed.

A small aside…after reading the book and then re-reading the publisher’s blurb I wondered if they had read the same book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin for the Advanced Reader Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

I’m actually not sure if this counts as a thriller, but I’m unsure what else to categorise it. It’s surprisingly difficult to describe, but trust me: it’s well worth the read. I was absolutely hooked.

It’s the story of a cult. Of love. Of dystopia, and of growing up. It follows the story of Lia, Grace and Sky, three sisters who have been raised by strict parents in a world that they are told is literally toxic to young women. They are taught to resist love, to protect them. But is this true, or not? We’re never explicitly told, but when three men arrive on their island, things are about to change.

The whole book is written in a dreamlike tone that plays with perspective and the viewpoints of the three sisters as they start to decide for themselves what is real and what isn’t. The weird and disturbing- the water cure, for instance- lie alongside a touching description of love between sisters, and a painful real depiction of what it means to grow up and fall in love for the first time. And all the time, the blurring between real and false, the danger of the men, and the reality of the world outside create a slow tension that eventually explores into violence at the end.

I loved it, but I can see why people wouldn’t. Still: for people looking for something different, I think it’s great.

I'm afraid I just couldn't finish this book. It started out interestingly enough - of the three sisters and their mother always referred to as 'mother' and then they are on the island, alone with those men. I have nothing good to say about this book and like my mother once told me, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

This was a very intense book- and the most confusing novels I have ever read this year.

The start of it made me feel like being damaged by a man, being left, lovesick. You know when you get heart ache you feel your family is the one and only place you can get unconditional love, no matter what you are. Then it started getting confusing altogether.

My first issue with the novel was the point of view. It was multiple, but after one point it fixed on Lia for ages. I felt the need to switch between Lia and Grace rather than getting stuck in Lia -which felt needy and teenager-like, but I guess that was the intention. And Sky: why was she in this book. Just another girl? What was her role.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book. It was an eerie-tale. Dark, obsessive. Mackintosh's imagination blew me away. The practices of 'water cure' are so similar with things happening to girls all around the world. In some countries girls get slapped when they get their first period bleeding. This is to ensure they become obeying, dutiful wives. Some people banish women from their houses during menstrual bleeding. So I totally get the point in Mackintosh's dystopian world. And I was ready to give a fat 4 stars but then things got confusing. I was lost after 80% of the book. Sudden, action packed ending with a few flashbacks that weren't enough for my thirst of knowing. I would have preferred a more vague ending- because what has been revealed isn't and won't be satisfying to a tale like that. The dreaminess of the first half was clouded by the end-reveal for me.

I agree that it is Virgin Suicides meets Handmaid's Tale- and in some bits I swear I could see Mackintosh winking to Angela Carter- the red velvet and wolf etc. (Highlighted on my kindle!)

A brilliantly realised feminist dystopia exploring the themes of love and cruelty. Set on an unnamed island, three sisters and their mother try to survive after the death of their father. The tone is controlled and the language fresh and exciting. The Water Cure deserves its place on the longlist for the Booker Prize. An amazing novel.

Billed as feminist dystopian fiction, this was always going to peak my interest. Then when it was recently revealed to have earned place on the Man Booker 2018 longlist, I knew I had to check it out.

The story entirely revolves around the experiences of 3 sisters, confined in their existence in a remote house, on a remote island, with only their parents for company. We soon realise that everything is not right with this family; with both parents subjecting the daughters to various 'cures' (definitely amounting to child abuse).

These cures are supposed to cleanse them, to keep them safe from the toxins of the mainland, to help them to protect their bodies. The sisters accept this treatment with no question, even willingly subjecting themselves to it. It is clear this has been the norm for as long as they remember and that the parents themselves believe in the efficacy of these cures. We learn that for some time, damaged women have been arriving to the house to receive similar cures, to help them to recover (although we never really fully understand from what.)

There is no getting away from the fact that I like books to tell me the whole story and this one most certainly doesn't. I found it so incredibly vague. What had happened on the mainland? Why were women's bodies so vulnerable to injury and suffering? What was it about the presence of men that was so damaging to them? Were they part of a cult? Was anything in fact wrong with the women at all?

I understand that this lack of information was a conscious choice by the author in order for you to come to some of your own conclusions, but that doesn't mean that I enjoyed it. There's a strong undercurrent of feminist metaphors that could be used in comparison to our current experience of women's' place in society, but I suspect I probably wasn't smart enough to entirely get all of these...

I also struggled with the narrative voice of the sisters. They tell the story so dispassionately, that it is hard to identify with them at all. It's true that this could be a result of the circumstances they have gown up in, not really knowing familial love in the way it should be experienced. But they were so cold and unfeeling at times, always abstracting their emotions. It would be a stretch to say any of them are likeable characters.

There is no denying that this book is beautifully written. It is atmospheric, haunting and almost poetic in parts. The narrative has a dreamy quality to it. Whilst I think that this is a really stylish piece of writing, it isn't something that resonated with me and ultimately I didn't get much enjoyment or satisfaction from reading it. I did find it frequently being a case of style over substance - in the end I needed more context and back story to make this work for me.

(NB - It is also worth noting that if descriptions of being held under water to the point of near drowning might act as a trigger for you, then this is a book to severely avoid.)

Thanks to the Publisher and Netgalley for this preview copy in return for an honest review.

Life is toxic. Men are toxic. Grace, Lia and Sky are safe on their island habitat, protected by their environment and the 'therapies' their father and mother make them undertake. They have no understanding of life beyond their immediate surroundings - except for the danger outwith; no knowledge of aeroplanes, technology, or the development of a woman. King, the father, has died and it is for the mother to raise the girls safely. When three other males arrive, what will the impact be on the girls and their environment?

Chilling and sometimes creepy, this is a fascinating and thought-provoking read. Well recommended.

What's it about?

Imagine a world very close to our own: where women are not safe in their bodies, where desperate measures are required to raise a daughter. This is the story of Grace, Lia and Sky, kept apart from the world for their own good and taught the terrible things that every woman must learn about love. And it is the story of the men who come to find them - three strangers washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent, trailing desire and destruction in their wake.

(Blurb borrowed from Amazon)

My thoughts

What a book. But the blurb doesn't really do it justice. It's the story of three girls and their parents, Mother and King, who live in what seems to be an abandoned hotel on an island. There has apparently been some apocalyptic event on the mainland, and the girls can only be saved by staying on the island. That is probably the simplest summary I can give. I think this is a rare chameleon of a book, one that will take a different form for every reader. I've seen it described variously as a feminist dystopia, a thriller and a coming of age story, but none of those labels work individually. It's all of those things and more. 

Mackintosh's writing is hypnotic, eerily calm in the face of danger. It's languid but also frantic, a barely suppressed sense of panic rising as the story progresses. She has that gift of conveying surroundings through sparse description; you can feel the summer heat, taste the sea salt from King's 'cures', hear the muffled footsteps in the decaying house. 

There's no one truth here, but different versions tumbling together to create a kaleidoscope of reality. There is a strong sense that nothing is what it seems here, and every event, every person, every place has an equal and opposing side. Are King's 'therapies' actually helpful or the actions of a tyrannical abuser? I honestly don't know. 

While reading it, it reminded me strongly of the Odyssey. Specifically, a version of Book 12 told from the point of view of the sirens. But again, I don't think that fully fits, just gives one small point of view. It also reminded me of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides, and I wondered if that had been an influence. From the 'feminist dystopia' point of view, I can see how that would partially work- although there are various parts where it falls apart for me- and it's the most likely label to be attached to it. There have been a slew of these type of novels recently, possibly due to the resurgence of The Handmaid's Tale and I think this is one of the most affecting. I'm still thinking about it, trying to make sense of it, over a week after finishing it. 

Would I recommend it?

Yes, I would. Give it time, let it get under your skin.

"I will tell her that all of this has been an awakening, this fever dream, this discovery."

The Booker longlisted The Water Cure starts with an intriguing set up: three girls on an isolated island, deliberately cut off by their parents from contact with the outside world, and subject to strange cures and therapies.

The strength of this section is that it is open to so many different, and resonant, explanations. The following are ones I noticed, or were brought to my attention by other reviewers. Almost all of them seem arguably present in the text (see tbw quotes) and in interviews the author seems happy to acknowledge them as potentially valid readings. These include:

A literal manifestation of toxic masculinity:

"They let the toxic words fall out of their mouths with no care for what they could do to her.
...
I became allergic to my husband. He refused to acknowledge how sick he was making me. He told me I was making it up, that it wasn’t possible, even when I coughed up blood, when my hair stopped up the plughole."

Ecological disaster:

"One of us daughters always fainted. Sometimes it was two or all of us. When that happened, King would become agitated. ‘You see?’ he would tell us as we surrounded the fallen sister, as we flicked water against skin. ‘You see how quickly you’d die out there?’"

A response to the election of a President who boasts about pussy grabbing and comments on his own daughter's sex appeal:

"I didn’t understand how rapidly things had changed, how all that had been needed was permission for everything to go to shit, and that permission had been granted. I didn’t know that there was no longer any need for the men to hold their bodies in check or to carry on the lie that we mattered."

A world where victims of male violence are blamed (e.g. the recent Northern Irish case), and where women are taught they must dress and behave in certain ways to remain safe:

"Refrain of the man, universal: This is not my fault!

See also: I absolve myself of responsibility.

And: I never said that. You can’t take the actions of my body as words."

Patriarchal survivalist cults ...

"You explained to me, one day when we were alone, when Mother was somewhere below, probably taking a nap: you had saved all you could. That is, we had proved ourselves the only ones worth saving."

... with complicit matriachal support:

"More than that, she was a woman at our father’s side, absorbing and refining his theories.

She had been behind the more sadistic therapies. Whether she truly believed in being cruel to be kind, or whether she just secretly hated us, reminders of what it meant to be younger and more beautiful, I cannot quite decide."

Abusive parents manipulating inter-sibling relationships:

"All of us put our arms around her and told her that of course we would still love her, of course, but we knew it wouldn’t be the same, that she would have to scramble more for the affection, that it wouldn’t come as easily. We wouldn’t be able to touch her so freely. You picked me, as usual, tying me to you for another year. You rigged it. The whole thing was a sham."

The dynamics between sisters in a large family:

"‘Sometimes,’ Mother tells us, when she is trying to be loving, ‘I can no longer tell you girls apart.’ Some days we like this, some days we don’t.
...
I say a prayer while wondering how I could ever have thought that we were two parts of the same person."

Overprotective parents keeping children in fearful ignorance:

"Why should I, it wasn’t something that had been laid out for me yet, it wasn’t necessary information. ‘Sometimes it’s better not to know,’ said Mother. At the time, that was good enough for me."

Women's violent revenge for generations of abuse by men (cf Naomi Alderman's The Power):

"The anger of the women seemed a force from outside them. It was an anger that welled up deep in their chests. Without it, they would not have been able to survive. I personally have always welcomed it. The moments of power. The burning in my stomach."

Borders - seemingly an obligatory criteria for this year's Booker:

"I will never come further than this from my home, I will never be a person who crosses the border. I will never leave my sisters again."

Victorian times where women underwent (often forced and typically medically dubious) treatment in sanitoriums for conditions such as hysteria:

"We are lucky, because we have been exposed to minimal damage. We remember what those women looked like when they came to us. But we also remember the effect the therapies had on them. How their bodies strengthened until they were finally ready to undergo the water cure.
...
Inventing a new therapy always put him in an expansive, joyful mood."

And to add a personal one, the potential later risks of sending my three daughters to all-girls school until the age of 18:

"‘I know what it’s like to be a young woman,’ she tells us. ‘I know all about what can destroy you.’ We wait for her to tell us more. ‘It’s natural, what you’re feeling,’ she says, addressing me specifically this time. ‘It’s natural to want to look.’ Grace laughs, a short laugh. ‘Stop it, Grace,’ Mother tells her. She squeezes our hands tighter.

The men are somewhere inside, I don’t know where. In our corridors, breathing our air. Sitting in our furniture, leaving their trace. ‘You need a love therapy ,’ she tells us."

And echoes of Shakespeare (King Lear, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream)

The weakness of this section is arguably that they can't all be there, that perhaps Mackintosh has created too blank a slate and left too much to the reader.

This criticism is perhaps most valid with the Shakespeare comparisons - comparisons the author herself has acknowledged: one needs more than an eccentric man on an island with three daughters whose love he manipulates to make this a Tempest/ King Lear mash-up.

But in many respects my problem with The Water Cure was the opposite. The ambiguity and wide potential interpretation was impressive, but I wish the novel had stopped there, as a novella (c.f. the quite brilliant MBI shortlisted Fever Dream).

Instead the 2nd section, narrated from one sister's perspective, which describes what happened when three men arrive, rather dragged and added little for me, indeed perhaps detracted.

And the closing section, while bringing the book to a suitable end, seemed to be unneccsarily reliant on some reveals that might have been better left for readers to deduce or imagine.

But then of course as a novella, unlike apparently graphic novels, far-fetched steampunk, poor crime fiction and poetry, it wouldn't have been Booker eligible.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3 for the 4.5 star novella it might have been.

The Water Cure is set on an island in a post-apocalyptic near future. Three sisters, Grace, Lia and Sky live in a health spa hotel with their mother and King, their stepfather. Their guests are all damaged women, seeking cures from the sun and radiation and other horrors of the mainland. The radiation has not reached the island, offering the family a refuge from the horrors of the real world.

And one day King dies. And three men arrive from the mainland. And mother disappears.

This feels like a transposition of a 19th Century Irish manners novel into another era. The sisters might as well have been living in the big house, an Anglo-Irish family refusing to fraternise with the servants and sheltering from the growing rebellion outside the gates. The girls are expected to engage in all sorts of treatments and cures - the rituals and manners of the aristocracy - to protect them from the coarseness of the men in the fields. Then, in the season of their debut, they are expected to transform from children into wives.

And just like the manners novels, we find ourselves thrown into a maelstrom of sibling rivalry; we find the blend of excitement and terror at being cut loose into adulthood; we find power games between young women and red blooded men.

For the first section, before the men arrive, the narration switches often between Lia and Grace - with some sections narrated in third person - and it is intriguing. This, to be fair, is the time when it still seemed we were in a dystopian future and the novel was to be about the world that had been created rather than a character study supposed to reflect a universal and severe family. Then, when the men show up, the pace changes and the line between fantasy/dream and reality blurs. The narrative focus shifts only occasionally and the pace slows to a crawl - ironically since the characters seem to do a lot of running around for its own sake. There is a really repetitive feel; it is stated over and over again that the sisters must not touch the men for fear of contamination, yet still they are driven to touch. By the end of this section, it is no longer terribly clear what is happening at all; there are violent thoughts and violent acts but it feels pretty directionless. The ending is the pretty much inevitable conclusion that everything has been slowly working up to.

I am sure some people will like this book. Read at a simplistic level, it could be taken as a battle of the sexes. The isolation of the women could be seen as a uber-feminist kind of utopia - except that the women don't seem happy with it and still live under the shadow of King. And I am sure some readers will be able to find a climate change angle to fit with their world view. Maybe I wilfully read this to fit in with my fascination with Irish politics. So maybe it is a bit of a universal truth template just waiting for readers to overlay their own personal agenda.

The trouble is, as a template it is probably a bit of an imperfect, forced fit. And in its own rights, it is all a bit confusing and unevenly paced.

This one really wasn't for me at all and originally I did stop at 39% and it was going to be a DNF.
But I decided to persevere and forced myself to finish. Hoping it would get better.
I’m sorry to say for me it didn’t.
So although on paper this seemed a good fit for me in actuality it just wasn't.
I have seen reviews on "The Wate Cure" praising the brilliance of the prose and yes while I do agree the language used here had an almost fluid brilliance to it it still for me fell flat in capturing and then retaining my complete attention.
I don't mind admitting I felt a little lost in my overall comprehension here and while scratching my head still in confusion at a third in I decided enough was enough.
That was when I decided to down tools before later reconsidering as I just didn’t want to be beaten by this.
I really didn't have the foggiest most of the time what the deal was here and if I'm honest I was bored and couldn't be bothered to stay the course and find out really.
It was my sheer bloody determination that got me through this.
I am if I'm honest slightly disappointed as the blurb for this was ever so intriguing but In my opinion, this was spoiled by attempting to be too highbrow in its execution keeping me in an unnecessary state of confusion that for me rather than making me want to know more just did the complete opposite.
I don’t know what I expected from this but this sure wasn’t it.
Maybe I'm just not clever enough to truly appreciate “The Water Cure"
I read to escape and this was just too much like hard work for me.
I'm sure there are others who will absolutely adore this strange dystopian type drama I'm just really not one of them sorry.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of "The Water Cure" of which I have reviewed voluntary.
All opinions expressed are entirely my own.

I think this is the type of book that requires reading twice. I spent much of my first read through feeling confused about what was happening which I personally don't find intriguing as a reader, however I'm sure others might.

This is one of those novels where the blurb does not give you a particularly in depth or detailed description of what the novel contains. Admittedly I was drawn in by the similarities that were mentioned between The Handmaid’s Tale and The Virgin Suicides and I thought it seemed like something different to what I normally read, and I love The Handmaid’s Tale so I had quite high hopes.
Honestly I just don’t think this novel was for me. I’ve seen many others have really enjoyed it; both other bloggers, and people I speak to in work. It just didn’t work for me!
The plot had quite a few holes in it, I understand that there is an air of mystery around the novel, as we are not sure what has happened to the world, and we are just not sure what is true. However, there just was too much confusion around too many things for me to really get a grip on the novel, Even at the end of the novel nothing was much clearer, and honestly I questioned why I had bothered reading the novel at all, as I ended with more questions and confusion than I started with.
The novel is narrated in turn by the three sisters, although Lia does the most narrating. I quite liked how unreliable all the narrators were, and how quite often what they had said would be contradicted or completely falsified by what a sister said in the next chapter. However, the unreliability became wearing when nothing was ever clarified or explained at all.
Unfortunately I also found the novel to be quite predictable. As soon as the men turned up, things went almost exactly as I thought they might, and that was quite disappointing. I wanted more tension and more twists and turns, which would have helped elevate what is quite a dark and sombre novel into something more.

Very well-written and atomspheric yet at the same time, I'm not 100% sure what actually happened or what the point of it was. What was the significance of all the italicised paragraphs, reporting what happened to the women of the wider world at the hands of men? I felt it *almost* made a link between modern-day society and the Me Too era but not quite. I didn't enjoy it exactly (but I don't think that was the author's aim) but it pulled me through, and for such a literary title with little plot, it was a surprisingly compelling read.