Book author: Sophie Mackintosh

It was strange reading this book so soon after Motherland by Sheila Heti. This feels like a different more fictionalised approach to the same question of what it means to be a mother, of who has the right to be one, of how it shapes a woman’s life and the importance of individual rather than state-enforced choice. Continue reading Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh

Three sisters, Grace, Lia and Sky live in a large house that used to be a retreat for suffering women seeking to heal themselves from the wrongs of men. The sisters live there with their father and mother. They undergo treatments and cures, they prepare themselves for the fight against the contaminated world outside the parameters of the house. They survive on goods their father brings from the mainland. He sails away for three days, trading talismans that the women sew, wearing a white suit to deflect contamination.

The rituals and treatments, the cures, are cruel, designed to test obedience and strength, to keep their womanly and dangerous feelings in check.

Then their father is gone with one of the boats. A blood stained shoe washes up on the shore. What will they do now he is gone? Continue reading The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh