Sophie Mackintosh

the-water-cure

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Kate-Atkinson

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

Longlisted for the Women’s Prize

Cursed Bread

Blue Ticket

The Water Cure

Penguin Shop: 3 Clothbound Classics for £33

Compulsive, eerily gorgeous, [it] will have you gripped until the end... A film adaptation feels inevitable... As far as debuts go, this is superb

A feminist dystopian fairy tale, a sexual coming-of-age story and a survival-of-the-fittest tale. Evocative, suspenseful and bleak - in short, everything this age seems to be demanding

[An] eerie, uncanny literary debut... Beautifully written, pared down and hypnotic

Bewitching... [An] ambiguous utopia

In raw, visceral prose, Mackintosh probes at ideas of the threat of male violence, the ways women are told to protect ourselves, love and sisterhood and survival. A hypnotic, stormy book, with one of my favourite endings I've read in a long while

Stunning... A haunting story of abuse, death, and desire... Chilling and topical, a breathtaking debut

Eerily beautiful, this strange, unsettling novel creeps up and grabs hold of you

Paula Hawkins, author of 'The Girl on the Train'

Darkly gratifying, dreamy, primal, and arresting [as] a fairy tale... The overgrown grounds, with their perimeter of rusty barbed wire and shark-infested waters, resemble Sleeping Beauty's castle

Searing, richly drawn, eerily compelling... As foreboding in what it holds back as in what it reveals

Elemental... [A] utopia portrayed in spectral, organic prose... Mackintosh is a wonderful stylist; the full scope of her imagination, as well as the cohesion of her vision, is evident on every page... A seriously impressive feat

[A] wildly confident debut... Take the strange social ceremonies of The Lobster and the pheromone-rich claustrophobia of The Beguiled and you come close to the world Sophie Mackintosh conjures

An extraordinary debut... Otherworldly, luminous, precise

Bold, inventive, haunting... With shades of Margaret Atwood and Eimear McBride, you'll be bowled over by it

The Water Cure is eerily still and pure - with saline bite... Mackintosh asks if it is the traumas of our pasts that ultimately pose the greatest threat to our futures

Powerfully unsettling, immensely assured, calmly devastating. It conjures a world both alien and familiar, exploring the physical and psychological cruelties enacted on women, by men, in the name of their protection, and the noble and ignoble uses to which anger can be put in a perverse world. This is a gem of a novel, and I was bowled over by it

Electric [and] beautifully strange... Her novel is an exercise in minimalism

A hypnotic read... This extraordinary debut is a feminist, quasi-dystopian read - great for fans of Hot Milk, The Girls and The Vegetarian

A work of cool, claustrophobic beauty. Sophie Mackintosh writes devastatingly well about the complexities that women face in loving men, and in loving each other

Eli Goldstone, author of 'Strange Heart Beating'

Uneasy, mythic, lawless... The atmospheric landscapes cloak trauma and violence in wisps of uncertainty, where bad feelings coalesce as both presciently felt and strangely unknowable

Otherworldly, brutal and poetic: a feminist fable set by the sea, a utopia gone awry, a female Lord of the Flies. It transported me, savaged me, filled me with hope and fear. It felt like a book I'd been waiting to read for a long time

[A] lyrical debut, original and very atmospheric

Eerie, electric, beautiful. It rushes you through to the end on a tide of tension and closely held panic. I loved this book

Creepy and delightful, a portrayal of post-apocalyptic puberty, intermingling desire and despair. It has a pinch of Shirley Jackson, a dash of chlorine, and an essence all of its own

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of 'Harmless Like You'

Powerful, mythic, seductively sinister... Her alternative world is as carefully imagined as one of Margaret Atwood's... [Sophie Mackintosh] is a writer to be reckoned with

Eerie and unsettling, the novel exerts a hypnotic grip as the tension builds

The Water Cure deserves a Sofia Coppola-style big-screen treatment, although its cultish overtones and sinister denouement are as reminiscent of The Wicker Man as The Virgin Suicides

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018

Once upon a time, damaged women came here to be cured. We took them in, fed them glasses of our clean, good water, let them scream at the waves till their lips split like ripe fruit. Now no one is left but my sisters and me. King died a year ago, quite suddenly. Mother has vanished, no one knows where. And the safe compound they built around us, far away from the toxic world, has finally been breached. 
 
Three men arrived last week, washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent. We remember now what our father taught us. 'If the men come to you, show yourself some mercy. Don't stick around and wait for them to put you out of your misery.'

BRITISH VOGUE 'STAR OF THE FUTURE' 
 
INDEPENDENT BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE 
 
 'A gripping, sinister fable' Margaret Atwood (via Twitter) 
 
 'An extraordinary debut - otherworldly, luminous, precise' Guardian 
 
 'Bold, inventive, haunting... With shades of Margaret Atwood and Eimear McBride, you'll be bowled over by it' Stylist 
 
Grace, Lia and Sky live in an abandoned hotel, on a sun-bleached island, beside a poisoned sea. Their parents raised them there to keep them safe, to make them good. The world beyond the water is contaminated and men are the contamination. But one day three strangers wash ashore - men who stare at the sisters hungrily, helplessly. Men who bring trouble. 
 
This ebook edition includes an exclusive extract from Sophie Mackintosh's gripping second novel, Blue Ticket, which is out now. 
 
***** 
 
 '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 
 
'Visceral, hypnotic, with one of my favourite endings I've read in a long while' The Pool 
 
 'An unsettling dark fantasy... [It] lingers long after the final page' Daily Telegraph

Imagine a world very close to our own: where women are not safe in their bodies, where desperate measures are required to raise a daughter. This is the story of Grace, Lia and Sky, kept apart from the world for their own good and taught the terrible things that every woman must learn about love. And it is the story of the men who come to find them - three strangers washed up by the sea, their gazes hungry and insistent, trailing desire and destruction in their wake. 
 
Hypnotic and compulsive, The Water Cure is a fever dream, a blazing vision of suffering, sisterhood and transformation. Sophie Mackintosh brings us face to face with the brutality of love, demanding to know the price of survival in a hostile world.

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of three novels: The Water Cure, Blue Ticket and Cursed Bread. Her debut novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 and won a Betty Trask Award 2019. Cursed Bread was longlisted for the Women's Prize 2023. She has been published in Granta, The White Review and TANK magazine among others.

The Water Cure

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018

Format:

Buy the book from:

Compulsive, eerily gorgeous, [it] will have you gripped until the end... A film adaptation feels inevitable... As far as debuts go, this is superb

A feminist dystopian fairy tale, a sexual coming-of-age story and a survival-of-the-fittest tale. Evocative, suspenseful and bleak - in short, everything this age seems to be demanding

[An] eerie, uncanny literary debut... Beautifully written, pared down and hypnotic

Bewitching... [An] ambiguous utopia

In raw, visceral prose, Mackintosh probes at ideas of the threat of male violence, the ways women are told to protect ourselves, love and sisterhood and survival. A hypnotic, stormy book, with one of my favourite endings I've read in a long while

Stunning... A haunting story of abuse, death, and desire... Chilling and topical, a breathtaking debut

Eerily beautiful, this strange, unsettling novel creeps up and grabs hold of you

Darkly gratifying, dreamy, primal, and arresting [as] a fairy tale... The overgrown grounds, with their perimeter of rusty barbed wire and shark-infested waters, resemble Sleeping Beauty's castle

Searing, richly drawn, eerily compelling... As foreboding in what it holds back as in what it reveals

Elemental... [A] utopia portrayed in spectral, organic prose... Mackintosh is a wonderful stylist; the full scope of her imagination, as well as the cohesion of her vision, is evident on every page... A seriously impressive feat

About Sophie Mackintosh

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter