2019 Betty Trask Prize (nominee)
2018 Booker Prize (longlist)
“A gripping, sinister fable!” —Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
NPR • GLAMOUR • GOOD HOUSEKEEPING • LIT HUB • THRILLIST
King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. Here on his island, women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world.
But when King disappears and two men and a boy wash ashore, the sisters’ safe world begins to unravel. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters are forced to confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent.
A haunting, riveting debut, The Water Cure is a fiercely poetic feminist revenge fantasy that’s a startling reflection of our time.
Genre: Science Fiction
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
NPR • GLAMOUR • GOOD HOUSEKEEPING • LIT HUB • THRILLIST
King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. Here on his island, women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world.
But when King disappears and two men and a boy wash ashore, the sisters’ safe world begins to unravel. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters are forced to confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent.
A haunting, riveting debut, The Water Cure is a fiercely poetic feminist revenge fantasy that’s a startling reflection of our time.
Genre: Science Fiction
Praise for this book
"A work of cool, claustrophobic beauty." - Eli Goldstone
"Eerily beautiful, this strange, unsettling novel creeps up and grabs hold of you." - Paula Hawkins
"Eerie, electric, beautiful. It rushes you through to the end on a tide of tension and closely held panic. I loved this book." - Daisy Johnson
"Otherworldly, brutal and poetic: a feminist fable set by the sea, a female Lord of the Flies. It felt like a book I'd been waiting to read for a long time." - Emma Jane Unsworth
"Eerily beautiful, this strange, unsettling novel creeps up and grabs hold of you." - Paula Hawkins
"Eerie, electric, beautiful. It rushes you through to the end on a tide of tension and closely held panic. I loved this book." - Daisy Johnson
"Otherworldly, brutal and poetic: a feminist fable set by the sea, a female Lord of the Flies. It felt like a book I'd been waiting to read for a long time." - Emma Jane Unsworth
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for Sophie Mackintosh's The Water Cure