ABSTRACT
This chapter relies on Sophie Mackintosh’s The Water Cure (2018) to comment on and decode an emerging, aqueous trend in contemporary (science) fiction, which repositions bodies of water at the core of planetary networks of more-than-human exchange. Mackintosh’s novel juxtaposes images of a fictive pandemic with currents that continuously wash debris ashore of a seemingly remote island, where a family of five has come to live. King, Mother, and their three daughters lead a self-sufficient life on the island and shun all forms of connection with the decayed mainland. Yet, much like viruses, waters tend to act irrespectively of human boundaries, carrying and redrawing bodies and landscapes. Through a poetic language that is rich in ambiguity, The Water Cure offers us a chance to rethink human wishes of immunizing insulation against (non)human agents, and to interrogate the significance and potential of the impossibility of successful enclosure.
