The titular cure refers to filling your mouth with water (or any handy liquid) in order to prevent yourself from blurting out a knee-jerk reaction and buy yourself time to calm down and come up with a more reasonable one.

This cure in not often enough applied in the home in this book, narrated by the youngest of four children with a Lutheran priest father and a mother who had been born Jewish but converted to Christianity before marriage. As they have grown apart, their relationship was strained even before the Nazis rise to power forced them to move from Germany to rural Austria and put them in a constant state of stress as the laws, culture, society, and other elements of their surroundings become increasingly hostile to Gabi and her children.

Their ability to go to school, interact with others, shop, and everything else meet growing challenges as the war progresses, and the young narrator's growing perspective and occasional semi-omniscient knowledge of things he found out or came to understand later or just "got" from the author made for a very personal and engaging style, and made for a mix of adult and child's perspective.

The way the regime gradually became stricter and simultaneously accepted is brilliantly captured by this style, and is very timely given parallels in populism and scapegoating.

I received a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.