At the time the narrative sets in, none of these women are still there though (the reaons for this remaining unclear). The narrative also tells us that there used to be female visitors who sought shelter from male violence, insinuating that we are dealing with a kind of cult. Their disturbance becomes obvious to the reader as the book is told from the sisters' perspectives. Whatever might be the case, King's rule clearly is a patriarchy as well, and a particularly vicious one: To toughen the kids and under the guise of teaching them survival techniques, both mother and King have severely abused the sisters, both physically and mentally. He was the one who decided to take the family away from civilization, claiming he wants to protect the women from male violence and the toxic outside world - it remains unclear whether some environmental catastrophe has occurred or whether the meaning is purely metaphorical, hinting at toxic values or the toxic system of patriarchy. Their father, not-so-subtly named King, recently left to get some supplies, but hasn't returned.

In the novel, we meet three sisters, Lia, Grace and Sky, who live in almost complete isolation at a remote beach with their mother (who is reduced to her role and consequently referred to only as 'mother'). Mackintosh's writing is languid and evocative, but there is nothing below the surface - no one will drown in the depths of this story. Of course you can slap the label 'feminist dystopia' on a book in order to sell more copies, alas, it doesn't make the book a feminist dystopia. Can they survive the men?Ī haunting, riveting debut about the capacity for violence and the potency of female desire, The Water Cure both devastates and astonishes as it reflects our own world back at us. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent.

Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world.īut when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. He has laid the barbed wire he has anchored the buoys in the water he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. 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.

Leni zumas