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I am guilty not because of my actions, to which I freely admit, but for my accession, admission, confession that I executed these actions with not only deliberation and premeditation but with zeal and paroxysm and purpose....The true answer to your question is shorter than the lie. Did you? I did.
This is a confession of a victim turned villain. When Ishmael Kidder's eleven-year-old daughter is brutally murdered, it stands to reason that he must take revenge by any means necessary. The punishment is carried out without guilt, and with the usual equipment — duct tape, rope, and superglue. But the tools of psychological torture prove to be the most devastating of all.
Percival Everett's most lacerating indictment to date, The Water Cure follows the gruesome reasoning and execution of revenge in a society that has lost a common moral ground, where rules are meaningless. A master storyteller, Everett draws upon disparate elements of Western philosophy, language theory, and military intelligence reports to create a terrifying story of loss, anger, and helplessness in our modern world. This is a timely and important novel that confronts the dark legacy of the Bush years and the state of America today.
Review:
"In this latest tense salvo from the author of Wounded and Erasure, Ishmael Kidder-divorced, self-loathing, and distrustful of government and restaurants-lives on a mountain outside of Taos, New Mexico, writing romance novels under the name Estelle Gilliam. When his 11-year-old daughter Lane is brutally murdered, Ishmael's already fragile world implodes, and revenge becomes his only salve. Having kidnapped and tortured the man he believes to be Lane's killer, he writes a confession and manifesto, which Everett delivers as this novel. Composed in text fragments and illustrations, Ishmael's ponderous rant covers everything from semiotics and Greek philosophy to deception and the Iraq War. Scenes of torture and grief are affecting but surprisingly few, and scant time is devoted to the captor-captive relationship, or any relationship, other than Ishmael's with words. Many of his fragments are nearly indecipherable, as he inverts sentences and misspells words to contend with the failures of language and meaning, and by extension sanity, morality and law. While Everett's aims are imaginatively and intellectually rigorous, the novel's tangle of emotion and strained logic ultimately frustrate the reader more than illuminate Ishmael's plight. The best scenes, however, relate wry but beautiful moments of civic and domestic tenderness in language that is musical and sure." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"The narrator of 'The Water Cure' is a man whose 11-year-old daughter has been raped and killed. He now is in the process of torturing her murderer, but this, as they say, is only the tip of the iceberg. True, as a subject it's plenty disturbing in itself, but through a variety of devices — including drawings, mini-lectures on language, philosophy, politics, theology and nature, and even excerpts... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) from a romance novel called 'The Gentle Storm' — Percival Everett has made his new novel much more than a simple horror show or self-righteous rant. So while 'The Water Cure' is most decidedly a novel, it is also a meditation on what it means to be a victim and a torturer at the same time. In his finest book to date, Everett combines in his narrator, Ishmael Kidder, a man pursued by furies (some of his own making — he had left his wife before his daughter was killed) and one who speaks with a cool sense of detachment. If this question of who has the right to torture seems familiar to Americans, it's not an accident. One of my favorite moments comes early on as Kidder declares, 'I come from a nation of stupid (expletive) and by association, at least, if not genetic inevitability, a sobering and sickening thought, I must be a stupid (expletive) as well. The stupid (expletives) in my country elected a king stupid (expletive), and he ruled with stupid (expletive) glory and majesty, a stupid (expletive) for the ages, who in a more fair time might have been successful as the man who follows behind the circus parade with a shovel, but probably not. The stupid (expletive) was elected by stupid (expletive) and supported by stupid (expletive) and even occasionally fell out of favor with stupid (expletive), but stupid (expletive), being stupid (expletive), either forgot or forgave and again loved the king stupid (expletive).' Reading this made me happy for just exactly as long as it took me to realize that this nation of 'stupid (expletive)' included me. Gulp. Not surprisingly, the book is a series of fragments, as befits a mind in agony. Do the parts add up to a whole? Almost, and this is one of Everett's points. In one part Kidder sets up 18 mirrors around the molester so the man can better witness his own torture. Would 18 more make his picture twice as complete? Would one have been plenty? So these fragments of writing are like pieces of the mirror through which Kidder reveals his own agony — frustrating, incomplete, inexact. Throughout the book, a drawing sequence — the famous Gestalt cat — emerges whisker by whisker, so that at the end there it is, almost complete, lacking only eyes. So how are we to make sense of ourselves? Everett is too wise and too sad to provide any answers, except to remind us that language won't save us — a brave statement for a writer. Steadfastly, stubbornly, he refuses to let the reader escape into a narrative fantasy; the pages that actually describe the events surrounding the girl's murder are surprisingly few, but they spread throughout the rest like a cancer, making the detachment more horrible. Can a novel be separated from life? How does a writer, or anyone else for that matter, separate himself or herself from 'the music of my torture, learned well from my world, my culture, my government'? Kidder is on fire, but if the cure for being on fire is water, what does it mean to drown? In other words, this is a book that not only makes you feel, but think. And what it made me think about was what poor stuff we humans are: venial, mendacious, hopeless and, yes, in pain, too. But also that the great mission accomplished by this particular president and his administration is to have made it impossible for humans, specifically Americans, to pretend yet again to be innocent. And if this realization leaves us with any glory at all, it's not the knowledge that the world can be made right again. Instead, it is the courage to contemplate the stream of misery we have left in our wake, and our own responsibility in the matter. It's no accident that the last word of 'The Water Cure' is 'retriever.' Jim Krusoe's next novel, 'The Girl Factory,' is forthcoming." Reviewed by Jim Krusoe, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Review:
"If Percival Everett isn't already a household name, it's because people are more interested in politics than truth." Madison Smartt Bell
Review:
"Percival Everett is a genius. He's a brilliant writer and so damn smart I envy him." Terry McMillan
Review:
"A sharp satirical voice only predictable in its provocation." Playboy Magazine
Review:
"Some readers will resist this, balking at the nonlinear, often nonsensical words on the page. For others who don't mind leaving the tidy structure of mainstream fiction, The Water Cure can be a bold adventure into the darkness of one man's heart." San Francisco Chronicle
Review:
"Daring, exasperating and occasionally brilliant, The Water Cure works best neither as political diatribe nor as psychological study but as the extended solo of a ravenous, indignant mind." Los Angeles Times
Synopsis:
Everett's lacerating novel follows the gruesome reasoning and execution of revenge in a society that has lost a common moral ground, where rules are meaningless. A master storyteller, the author creates a terrifying story of loss, anger, and helplessness in the modern world.
Percival Everett is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of sixteen books, including American Desert, Erasure, and Glyph. He lives in Los Angeles.
Roger Sarao, November 19, 2007 (view all comments by Roger Sarao)
This was the first book by Percival Everett that I read. Although I consider myself a fan of "experimental" fiction, I cannot recommend this book as an introduction to Everett's works. There are moments of brilliance, to be sure, but on the whole the story about a man's revenge on the person believed to have killed his daughter is too disjointed and too internalized to pull the reader in. Perhaps I started reading Everett with a book that those more familiar with his style will savor. Someday I may attempt another novel of his, if only because I appreciate the efforts of an author with an original voice in today's vapid literary landscape.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (6 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"In this latest tense salvo from the author of Wounded and Erasure, Ishmael Kidder-divorced, self-loathing, and distrustful of government and restaurants-lives on a mountain outside of Taos, New Mexico, writing romance novels under the name Estelle Gilliam. When his 11-year-old daughter Lane is brutally murdered, Ishmael's already fragile world implodes, and revenge becomes his only salve. Having kidnapped and tortured the man he believes to be Lane's killer, he writes a confession and manifesto, which Everett delivers as this novel. Composed in text fragments and illustrations, Ishmael's ponderous rant covers everything from semiotics and Greek philosophy to deception and the Iraq War. Scenes of torture and grief are affecting but surprisingly few, and scant time is devoted to the captor-captive relationship, or any relationship, other than Ishmael's with words. Many of his fragments are nearly indecipherable, as he inverts sentences and misspells words to contend with the failures of language and meaning, and by extension sanity, morality and law. While Everett's aims are imaginatively and intellectually rigorous, the novel's tangle of emotion and strained logic ultimately frustrate the reader more than illuminate Ishmael's plight. The best scenes, however, relate wry but beautiful moments of civic and domestic tenderness in language that is musical and sure." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review"
by Madison Smartt Bell,
"If Percival Everett isn't already a household name, it's because people are more interested in politics than truth."
"Review"
by Terry McMillan,
"Percival Everett is a genius. He's a brilliant writer and so damn smart I envy him."
"Review"
by Playboy Magazine,
"A sharp satirical voice only predictable in its provocation."
"Review"
by San Francisco Chronicle,
"Some readers will resist this, balking at the nonlinear, often nonsensical words on the page. For others who don't mind leaving the tidy structure of mainstream fiction, The Water Cure can be a bold adventure into the darkness of one man's heart."
"Review"
by Los Angeles Times,
"Daring, exasperating and occasionally brilliant, The Water Cure works best neither as political diatribe nor as psychological study but as the extended solo of a ravenous, indignant mind."
"Synopsis"
by april@powells.com,
Everett's lacerating novel follows the gruesome reasoning and execution of revenge in a society that has lost a common moral ground, where rules are meaningless. A master storyteller, the author creates a terrifying story of loss, anger, and helplessness in the modern world.
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