The Water Cure

Ishmael Kidder, the narrator of Percival Everett’s ambitious new novel, is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. Recently divorced, struggling with alcoholism, and writing romance novels under the pen name Estelle Gilliam, Kidder takes the final kick to the head when his 11-year-old daughter, Lane, is kidnapped and found dead in a ditch. The event sends Kidder, who blames himself, into a tailspin. He shucks his suburban life and heads for the mountains of Taos, New Mexico. But solace is not to be found in the mountains, only in the form of retribution. Kidder goes vigilante, kidnaps the accused killer and takes him to his basement in Taos, where he binds his hands with duct tape and repeatedly waterboards him—the torture du jour at Guantánamo also known as “the water cure.” (For the uninitiated, it involves covering the face of an immobilized victim and pouring water on him to simulate drowning.)

Even though the premise could easily provide enough fodder for a 250-page plumbing of Kidder’s fragile psychology, a basic character study is too pedestrian for Everett, whose novels often subvert readers’ expectations and refuse to play nicely. The Water Cure, which unfurls as Kidder’s confessional justification for kidnapping and torturing a man who may or may not be guilty of his daughter’s death, is steadfastly fragmentary; early on, Kidder alerts readers, “I say to hell with story, with plot.” The deconstructed narrative ping-pongs back and forth inside Kidder’s head and allows the reader to sample his musings (on semiotics, Greek philosophy, the existence of God); surrealistic scenes such as a philosophical discussion with Thomas Jefferson; an expletive-laced diatribe about George W. Bush; and Joyce-like wordplay. It’s immediately apparent Everett isn’t at all interested in providing some light beach reading; instead, he uses Kidder’s mind as a lens to examine the Bush administration’s use of torture in the War on Terror.

Despite its admirably ambitious construction, the novel’s fragments often amount to flash-in-the-pan philosophy or are rendered downright incomprehensible via syntax inversion and overwrought stylistic devices. Everett is at his literary best when he frames Kidder’s pain—moments few and far between, but which remind us that everyone’s suffering is unique.