The Water Cure
by Sophie Mackintosh
Buy on Amazon"An extraordinary otherworldly debut... [Mackintosh] is writing the way that Sofia Coppola would shoot the end of the world: everything is luminous, precise, slow to the point of dread." --The Guardian The Handmaid's Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has lain the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter . Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave . Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland.…
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"This disconcerting debut novel has been showered with praise and accolades this year, and rightly so. Three sisters come of age on a remote island, in thrall to parental teaching that the outside world will cause them irreparable harm. Reminiscent of that strange film Dogtooth , which I also loved, it’s a bewildering and disturbing fable that will appeal to those who enjoy ‘feminist dystopia’ fiction like The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power . This smart, self-deprecating novel is a thinly veiled portrait of the author as he struggles with imposter syndrome (verging on a total breakdown) during a prestigious fellowship overseas. Merciless in his forensic analysis of social interaction and his skewering of his own pretension, it’s also a clever exploration what can be lost and found in translation between two languages and cultures."
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