The Water Cure

Compulsive, eerily gorgeous, [it] will have you gripped until the end… A film adaptation feels inevitable… As far as debuts go, this is superb * Irish News *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 * NPR *[An] eerie, uncanny literary debut… Beautifully written, pared down and hypnotic * Sunday Times Culture *Bewitching… [An] ambiguous utopia * Guardian *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 * The Pool *Stunning… A haunting story of abuse, death, and desire… Chilling and topical, a breathtaking debut * Dazed *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 * New Yorker *Searing, richly drawn, eerily compelling… As foreboding in what it holds back as in what it reveals * Stylist *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 * Irish Times *

Sophie Mackintosh is the author of four novels, including The Water Cure and Cursed Bread. She has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize, has won a Betty Trask Award, and has been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. She has been published in Granta, The White Review and TANK magazine among others. Her new novel, Permanence, will be published in April 2026.