But either way, growing up in fear and isolation, the bond between the sisters is deeply close, almost beyond love or hate. It's never quite clear if this is a true dystopia, if women are really getting sick, or they are living in a cultish separatist movement with extreme beliefs. Mackintosh excels at creating a sense of ambient, originless dread, of pending apocalypse.
But they weren't prepared for what the men might make them feel. The girls were prepared for men to make them sick. But then King disappears, and three strange men wash up on shore. These all come with their own grim paraphernalia: ice water buckets, fainting sacks, drowning dresses. To keep them healthy, King has devised a complex series of grotesque cures and tests: the "drowning game," or "love therapy," when one sister does a gruesome or cruel task like killing an animal to spare another sister the same fate. "There is no hiding the damage the outside world can do, if a woman hasn't been taking the right precautions to guard her body."īook Reviews Louise Erdrich Delivers A Dystopian Feminist Thriller In 'Future Home' They are just close enough to the mainland to see the in the distance "the round glow of the horizon, the air peach-ripe with toxicity." They fence their borders, kill animals who might be carrying the toxins, and submit to elaborate purifying rituals. Three daughters, Grace, Lia and Sky, live alone with their mother and their father, whom they call King, and who claims to be the exception to the rule. In The Water Cure, a family has sequestered itself on an island to protect themselves against this spreading poison. To punish Eve, God famously gives her pain in childbirth, but he also says, "Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." In other words, it's the straight woman's trap: You love men, but it is men who are most likely to hurt you, subjugate you, even kill you. In a way, Mackintosh is just picking up the thread laid down by the authors of Genesis. But now we talk about toxic masculinity, which instead reminds us of a poison that sickens poisoners and victims alike. We used to talk about patriarchy, rule by men, which carries a sense of top-down power and hierarchy. But after half a century of oil spills, chemical runoff, and nuclear waste, it now carries the sense of seepage and pollution - in our water supply, air, food and, most recently, culture. The word toxic has its origins in the poison arrows Greek archers carried into battle. The Water Cure, a tart, uncanny debut novel by Sophie Mackintosh, is an unlikely thought experiment that asks: What if men were literally as well as figuratively toxic? Your purchase helps support NPR programming.
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