Water Cure (Mackintosh) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
In most apocalyptic tales, the reader is expected to accept certain baseline assumptions. The first is that the apocalypse is real; the second, that the story's main characters represent its truest victims. Sophie Mackintosh subverts both of these assumptions in her sumptuous yet sparsely written debut, The Water Cure…. Mackintosh delicately draws the reader's attention with haunting, oblique prose.
N.K. Jemisin - New York Times Book Review


An extraordinary otherworldly debut…. [Mackintosh] is writing the way that Sofia Coppola would shoot the end of the world: Everything is luminous.
Guardian (UK)


Creepy and sexy in equal measure, The Water Cure is a hypnotic portrait of three young women waking up to the world, desire, and the power of their bodies.
Independent (UK)


[A] chilling, beautifully written novel…. [T]he tautness and tension of the writing are staggering.
Judges Panel Citation - Man Booker Prize, 2018


Ingenious and incendiary
The New Yorker


Sensational…. Mackintosh’s taut novel turns a keen, unsparing eye on violence, patriarchy, and desire.
Esquire


Mackintosh’s novel follows in the footsteps of The Handmaid’s Tale… but this debut has its own alluring style, which has prompted comparisons to The Virgin Suicides for its gauzy, heady sexuality; lacy, precise prose; and the luminous sisters at its core.
Vogue


[An] intense, ambitious debut…. Mackintosh’s gripping novel is vicious in its depiction of victimhood, vibrant when victims transform into warriors, and full of outrage at patriarchal power, environmental devastation, and the dehumanization of women. 
Publishers Weekly


[I]image-laden and lyrical… imagines a societal breakdown that has inflicted most of its harm on women, which seems both frightening and inevitable, offering a dark, extended metaphor on toxic male/female relations. —Reba Leiding, emerita, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Library Journal


[A] spare, dystopian debut.… While the narrative at times veers toward the pedantic, it's… [an] evocative coming-of-age novel that captures the fear, rage, and yearning of three women growing up in a time of heightened violence.
Kirkus Reviews