The Water Cure

The Water Cure is a dystopian novel by Sophie Mackintosh that tells the story of three sisters soon after the death of their father, King. All their lives, they have been raised in isolation by their parents on a remote island.

Plot

Trapped in a hell of their parents' making, Grace, Lia, and Sky have spent years growing up on a secluded island away from the real world. The reason? The world is cruel, evil, and filled with men - men, who pollute the air with toxins fatal enough to kill. This is why their parents devised therapies for them to strengthen themselves against the violence of men and the dangers of loving too much.

'Love only your sisters!' All right, we decide, that is easy enough for us to do. 'And your mother,' she adds.

The further you read, the more disturbing the descriptions of those therapies become. Ranging from holding them underwater until they can't breathe to locking them in a sauna (to sweat out their feelings) until they faint, it's heartbreaking to watch Grace, Lia, and Sky narrate their abusive experiences. Worse, still, is the fact that they do not even know it is abuse - it is their acceptance of what they've been taught as truth that is truly blood-chilling.

Over the years we have learned how to dampen them down, how to practise and release emotion under strict conditions only, how to own our pain. I can cough it into muslin, trap it as bubbles under the water, let it from my very blood.

As we spend some time getting to know the sisters and their perspective of the world around them, three men wash up on the shores of the island, seeking sanctuary. Thrown into an unprecedented situation, the girls and their mother have to figure out how to deal with them: to keep themselves safe and leave the men at the mercy of the sea, or invite the males in with all the toxicity and temptation they stand for? It's unexplored territory... for both sides.

The sisters struggle with what they've been taught to accept, and how it compares to their experiences in real, which makes for an unsettling yet interesting atmosphere. It's a compelling first half. It's the second half, however, that I take issue with.

What follows are long chapters from Lia's narrative, which are periods of nothing really happening interspersed with the odd event. Things only ramp up at the end at a speed jarringly at odds with the rest of the book - with too much action, and not enough to justify it. Just when things start to get a bit more interesting, they're cut off - leaving the reader quite frustrated. I think it could have benefited from some more pages to explain it all.

Characters

The Mother and King

Despite King's fears, he is the very epitome of the men he tries to protect his daughters from. Even after his passing, his hand is felt throughout the story - manifesting itself in his twisted rituals, and in the permanent scars left on the sisters' bodies and their minds.

Death hardly does anything to end King's reign of terror - not with the mother still around. She stands ready with muslin and lessons on the toxicity of men, doling them out at the slightest infraction of the rules.

The Sisters

Brainwashed and malnourished, the three sisters have grown up enduring their parents' twisted therapies which hurt not only themselves but put them in situations where they were forced to hurt each other. Mackintosh does a great job at depicting their interpersonal dynamics: despite a running undercurrent of tension between them, they love each other dearly, moving together as a pack.

Worldbuilding

The world of The Water Cure is ethereal, laced with rich imagery of salt and the sea that ties into the title. It's soft at the edges but has a heart of cold iron, sinister under the unassuming surface.

Writing Style

The writing style, for the most part, is decent, but there are a few instances where the purple prose becomes too much to bear.

My main issue with the writing is the narration. Grace, Lia, and Sky start out with very similar narrative voices, to the extent that it's hard to tell them apart. And then, all of a sudden, halfway through the book, we switch to very long stretches told just from Lia's POV. I'm not sure she was the best choice, and the effect felt quite jarring to have any impact.

Personally, it would have been more interesting to see more events play out from the eyes of Grace (the oldest) or Sky (the youngest) to see how their perspectives changed over time.

In Conclusion

Ultimately, I'm not sure what to take away from this book. It stereotypes men as the abusers and women as the quiet sufferers of their violence - which is ironic, given how it ends. I really wish we'd spent more time examining the impact of the ending on the sisters instead of the sorry explanation we got. What did it want to leave us with? Can you never be better than what your parents raised you to be? Unfortunately, The Water Cure fails to answer this, and so... we'll never know.