2019 Betty Trask Award for Best First Novel (nominee)
2018 Booker Prize for Best Novel (nominee)
“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
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Used availability for Sophie Mackintosh's The Water Cure