A powerful and provocative story where the narrator uses a fairytale to explain a current story of abuse and violence. Different versions of Bluebeard exist, featuring a manipulative predator of a man who has murdered each of his wives when they fail to abide by his warning. The narrator of Sour Cherry is surrounded by ghosts who listen to this version of the tale, keeping ever-present company yet offering warning. This is not a comfortable read, it covers themes of toxic masculinity, plague, and murder. Men as well as women have fallen foul of this monster of a man. Author Natalia Theodoridou writes with a knowing pen, opening windows to understanding as they encourage a never-ending cycle that creates a destructive energy. I felt as though I was one of the ghosts, I so wanted to hold out a hand and prevent the story that circled around me. The entwined themes of ancient and modern, fairytale and reality, love and abuse, continued to hold in my minds-eye even as the story drew to a close. Gothic horror sits centre stage, yet it is the relevance of this novel to today that creates such impact. Unsettling snd emotional, Sour Cherry is a lingering cautionary tale that has been chosen as a Liz Pick of the Month.
In a mysterious apartment filled with ghosts, our unnamed narrator attempts to explain this to her child - how do I talk about this? she wonders.
The truth must become something beautiful. We must begin with a fairy tale.
And so she begins to construct a beautiful fairy tale for her child - one that begins with a strange baby boy whose nails grow too fast and whose skin smells of soil. As he grows from a boy into a man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Tragedy strikes in cycles - and wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. These ghosts call out desperately to our narrator as she tries to explain, in the very real world, exactly what has happened to her.
And they all agree on one thing, an inescapable truth about this man, this powerful lord who has loved them and led them each to ruin:
If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.
A debut novel as emotionally poignant as it is fiercely smart, Sour Cherry is an arresting debut examining toxic masculinity through its chorus of women - deconstructing the idea of what makes someone a monster.
'An extraordinary, hallucinatory accomplishment' KAREN JOY FOWLER
'[A] reminder about what it means to be alive . . . with razor-sharp prose and diction so precise' MORGAN TALTY
'Read it and be changed' B. PLADEK
Author
About Natalia Theodoridou
Natalia Theodoridou is a queer and transmasculine writer whose stories have appeared in venues such as Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, and Strange Horizons, and have been translated into Italian, French, Greek, Estonian, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. He won the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction and the 2022 Emerging Writer Award by Moniack Mhor & The Bridge Awards, and has been a finalist for the Nebula award multiple times. He holds a PhD in Media and Cultural Studies from SOAS, University of London. Born in Greece, with roots in Georgia, Russia, and Turkey, he currently lives in the UK.
