The Water Cure

‘'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 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/

I really enjoy Mackintoshs writing style.

I think the best way I can describe this book is with the word unmemorable. The prose is beautiful and the description of the scenery pretty nice but otherwise I can't think of much of anything that stood out.

This book is truly wild.

I sometimes felt that the writing style got in the way or took up too much space, but I still enjoyed it. I have always agreed that poets make excellent fiction writers. Sometimes that has its pros and cons .

It's definitely not feminist. The beliefs of this family is in no way remotely related to what feminism is. Even a misandrist wouldn't agree with some of the stuff they think, at least in my opinion.

I felt a bit weird about the cutting scenes (ex. minor, conciliatory slices in my thigh) just because it felt too “pretty”. It portrayed self harm as some sort of stress reliever that wasn't meant to be associated with mental illness. That was handled poorly and a bit insensitively.

I felt that the ending was cheap and confusing. Killing these men didn't do much for me. We could've delved a bit deeper by getting off the damn island ya know? I also am not sure what the ending is getting at. They're just walking around the island, trying to pass the “border”? What is the border and where does it lead to? Reading comprehension is not my strength, so if you DO know what the very end is doing, let me know. I am genuinely confused.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“There is a fluidity to his movements, despite his size, that tells me he has never had to justify his existence, has never had to fold himself into a hidden thing, and I wonder what that must be like, to know that your body is irreproachable.”

“If we were to spit at them, they would spit back harder. We expected that – we were prepared for it even. What we didn't expect was their growing outrage that we even dared to have moisture in our mouths. Then outrage that we had mouths at all. They would have liked us all dead, I know that now.”

“I forgave her easily because the scream was proof of concern, of love, the same way she would have screamed had a viper been raising its head, fangs bared towards my outstretched hand.”

Uuuuuuggggghhhhhh

Oppressive
Disturbing
Literary

I don't know how to describe this book, but it made me sick to my stomach. It's not gross. It's sad. It's upsetting. There's abuse. So much abuse.

I don't know why this is described as “fantasy,” because there's nothing particularly fantastic about it that I can see.

Ugh.

I want to talk to someone about this.

Too dreamy, too ambiguous all along without even giving us any clear answers in the end.

I didn't dislike this, but I didn't really like it either. The writing is beautiful and I wanted to know what would happen, but at the same time nothing really happened. And I don't necessarily need to be given backstory, but I feel like I still don't know what happened and is happening in this world. I don't know. :/