Sophie Mackintosh's The Water Cure Is Unlike Anything I've Ever Read

Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. It’s eerie and baffling, yet it’s probably the most beautifully written book I’ve read so far this year, if ever.

‘Grace, Lia and Sky live in an abandoned hotel, on a sun-bleached island, beside a poisoned sea.’ That poisoned sea comes from the men beyond the shore. The three girls have spent their lives watching their mother welcome sick and distraught women into the hotel for refuge and recovery. They’ve heard tales of what the men in this world can do, how they can possess you, get inside your mind and make you sick.

The girls are safe on the other side of the water until, one day, three men are washed up on the beaches of the hotel. Without their pedantic mother to influence them, the girls begin to explore how much damage these men can really do.

The concept is astonishing; these girls perform rituals, they don’t allow themselves to feel emotion and they put the importance of sisterhood above everything, all because of a toxic world beyond the water that they have never experienced, only heard about.

The whole narrative is driven by fear and this is exactly what Mackintosh instils within the reader too. It felt as if every single page was laced with tension. I was reading it, not realising that I was holding my breath.

The tension comes in moments of stillness too. Mackintosh’s descriptions are beautiful and visceral. I don’t believe a specific time period is referenced, but I held on to images of sliding glass doors leading to verandas by the pool where the girls lay under striped parasols. To me, the whole thing read as a 1920s version of The Truman Show in an Italian landscape. It might sound odd, but its hypnotic.

This book takes a fair amount of effort from the reader to figure out what’s going on. Mackintosh doesn’t give many answers to her feminist take on an odd and damaging patriarchal world.

‘In the night I wake up briefly and his body is shaking. I drape my arm across his stomach . . . He doesn’t say anything. He could be embarrassed, or my touch could have mended him. I prefer the second option. I prefer the idea that my body, as the object of love, has a power I could never have dreamed of.’

If you pick it up, you’ll constantly wonder why these men pose such a threat, why these girls must only cry once a week, why everything is so secretive in their world. I’m sure I’ll continue unpicking this incredible narrative for a long time yet.