'The Water Cure' Makes Toxic Masculinity Literal
In Sophie Mackintosh's tart, twisted fairy tale, a family hides away on a remote island to escape a world in which men may actually be toxic. But their lives are upended when three castaways wash up.
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?
The word toxic has its origins in the poison arrows Greek archers carried into battle. 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. We used to talk about
