The Water Cure by Sophie Macintosh

This book was long listed for the Booker prize and is really quite thought provoking and also a very quick read.  Not that I am a big fan of that, but if you don't love the book at first sight, it is easier to get through to the end, and then you can reflect back on the overall result.  This is a book that benefits from that kind of after thought.
This book flits between The Handmaid's Tale and King Lear.  There is a house on an island, alone by the sea. Inside live three girls with their parents. Outside, beyond the sea and the horizon, there is a terrible world where everything can go wrong. To understand what toxins are, and indeed for their knowledge of everything else, the girls have always deferred to their father, aptly names King. Their world is complete. And then, one day, he is gone.
The title of the book refers to one of the 'cures' for what ails women.  They are sewn into “fainting sacks” and “drowning dresses”; they keep muslin pressed to their mouths like masks. Now, after  King is gone, the truth is that his legacy is the real toxin: a trauma that forces its victims to go on playing it out.
One day, three men wash up on their beach and the truth of that becomes clear.  Really great read.