The Water Cure

This book is truly wild.

I sometimes felt that the writing style got in the way or took up too much space, but I still enjoyed it. I have always agreed that poets make excellent fiction writers. Sometimes that has its pros and cons .

It's definitely not feminist. The beliefs of this family is in no way remotely related to what feminism is. Even a misandrist wouldn't agree with some of the stuff they think, at least in my opinion.

I felt a bit weird about the cutting scenes (ex. minor, conciliatory slices in my thigh) just because it felt too “pretty”. It portrayed self harm as some sort of stress reliever that wasn't meant to be associated with mental illness. That was handled poorly and a bit insensitively.

I felt that the ending was cheap and confusing. Killing these men didn't do much for me. We could've delved a bit deeper by getting off the damn island ya know? I also am not sure what the ending is getting at. They're just walking around the island, trying to pass the “border”? What is the border and where does it lead to? Reading comprehension is not my strength, so if you DO know what the very end is doing, let me know. I am genuinely confused.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“There is a fluidity to his movements, despite his size, that tells me he has never had to justify his existence, has never had to fold himself into a hidden thing, and I wonder what that must be like, to know that your body is irreproachable.”

“If we were to spit at them, they would spit back harder. We expected that – we were prepared for it even. What we didn't expect was their growing outrage that we even dared to have moisture in our mouths. Then outrage that we had mouths at all. They would have liked us all dead, I know that now.”

“I forgave her easily because the scream was proof of concern, of love, the same way she would have screamed had a viper been raising its head, fangs bared towards my outstretched hand.”