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A review by rae_swabey
The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh
2.0
Some of the prose in this book is gorgeous, and Mackintosh certainly conjures an atmosphere, but I found this a real struggle to read. I felt no connection to any of the characters and didn’t really buy into the ‘world’ of the novel either.
It’s set on a sort of island, on which lives a family that carries out bizarre and horrific sounding rituals to protect themselves from some kind of unspecified contagion. Everything seems ambiguous, from the ‘toxins’ themselves to the relationships within the family.
The plot, I suppose, is meant to be lingering and haunting. I just found it slow and frustrating. There were a few disturbing episodes, so I can’t say it had no emotional impact, but I felt as though the emotional language of the book was too many steps removed from reality for those scenes to truly pack the punch they deserved.
I’m short, it was a book I appreciated more than enjoyed. It wasn’t really a dystopia, to my mind, more angsty literary fiction, and having enjoyed Blue Ticket, I was disappointed.
It’s set on a sort of island, on which lives a family that carries out bizarre and horrific sounding rituals to protect themselves from some kind of unspecified contagion. Everything seems ambiguous, from the ‘toxins’ themselves to the relationships within the family.
The plot, I suppose, is meant to be lingering and haunting. I just found it slow and frustrating. There were a few disturbing episodes, so I can’t say it had no emotional impact, but I felt as though the emotional language of the book was too many steps removed from reality for those scenes to truly pack the punch they deserved.
I’m short, it was a book I appreciated more than enjoyed. It wasn’t really a dystopia, to my mind, more angsty literary fiction, and having enjoyed Blue Ticket, I was disappointed.