Sophie Mackintosh

"A gripping, sinister fable!"--Margaret Atwood, via Twitter LONGLISTED FOR THE 2018 MAN BOOKER PRIZE l The Handmaid's Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has lain the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world. But when their father, the only man they've ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day two men and a boy wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men? A haunting, riveting debut about the capacity for violence and the potency of female desire, The Water Cure both devastates and astonishes as it reflects our own world back at us.

The Water Cure

"A mesmerizing, refracted vision of our society: In a world where women can't have it all, but are selected as either mothers or workers at the beginning of their adult lives, is choice the biggest burden of all?"--

Blue Ticket

WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION NOMINEE • Best Book of the Month: The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Book Riot, CrimeReads • An elegant and hypnotic new novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village, by the Booker Prize–nominated author of The Water Cure "Intoxicating, sumptuous, and savage.”—Alexandra Kleeman, acclaimed author of Something New Under the Sun Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population. In that town lived a woman named Elodie. She was the baker’s wife: a plain, unremarkable person who yearned to transcend her dull existence. So when a charismatic new couple arrived in town, the forceful ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet, Elodie was quickly drawn into their orbit. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse--but who was the predator and on whom did they prey? Audacious and mesmerizing, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory’s hall of mirrors, and an erotic fable of transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

A Novel

Cursed Bread

Margaret Drabble

Esther Freud

Combining personal reminiscence with reflections on the history of the place over the years and through the seasons, for the first time this collection brings together writers' impressions of the Pond.

Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies' Pond

At the Pond

Su Kürü

From the Man Booker-nominated author of The Water Cure comes an elegant and hypnotic new novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village. Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population. In that town lived a woman named Elodie. She was the baker’s wife: a plain, unremarkable person who yearned to transcend her dull existence. So when a charismatic new couple arrived in town, the forceful ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet, Elodie was quickly drawn into their orbit. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse – but who was the predator and on whom did they prey? Audacious and mesmerizing, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory’s hall of mirrors, and an erotic fable of transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

Jacqueline Harpman

Ros Schwartz

I Who Have Never Known Men

From the Booker Prize–nominated author of The Water Cure comes an elegant and hypnotic new novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village. Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population. In that town lived a woman named Elodie. She was the baker’s wife: a plain, unremarkable person who yearned to transcend her dull existence. So when a charismatic new couple arrived in town, the forceful ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet, Elodie was quickly drawn into their orbit. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse--but who was the predator and on whom did they prey? Audacious and mesmerizing, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory’s hall of mirrors, and an erotic fable of transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

Mavi Bilet

Biglietto blu

Imagine a world very close to our own: where women are not safe in their bodies, and where desperate measures are required to raise a daughter. Grace, Lia and Sky live in almost complete isolation on a remote beach with their parents, kept apart from the rest of society for their own good, and taught the terrible things that every woman must learn about love. The daughters perform painful rituals and therapies, in order to both ward off the effects of the toxin-filled world which lurks beyond the horizon, and keep their emotions under strict control. But then their father vanishes without a trace, and three strange men wash up on their shore - their gazes hungry and insistent, trailing desire and destruction in their wake...

This book captures the raw moment of inception behind a designer?s collection. Assemblage 6 started off with almost 300 maquettes: chairs, lamps, stools, or daybeds made of wire, cardboard, tape, and canvas, or the everyday materials to be found in Faye Toogood?s studio. But having lined up these rather crude, almost childlike maquettes, the collection, in essence, was decided. Seventeen were chosen to be scaled up to life-size works, and here we have an immersive journey through all the original maquettes and their occasional passage into the real world of furniture/sculpture, a book that plays with the sense of dissimulation evident in the final artworks, or the fact that some objects are not always what they seem at first glance.0The Man Booker?nominated author Sophie Mackintosh opens with this idea in her short story, while the book closes on an essay by the independent writer and curator Glenn Adamson, who ultimately provides context for the collection and process as a whole.

Sophie Mackintosh

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