Something terrible has happened.
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.
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.
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Reviews
Reading Sour Cherry did not remind me of great writers. No. It was like I discovered a new one. 'Masterwork' is used so often when discussing a book, and so I'm not going to say it's a masterwork: Sour Cherry is diamondwork, a treasure chest filled with objects from another world but made familiar to any reader. Only a standout, talented writer can pull this off. Sour Cherry is a remarkable novel, and one I will never forget.
If you love Kelly Link, Angela Carter, and Carmen Maria Machado, then Natalia Theodoridou is your new favorite author. Sour Cherry is a hell of an impressive debut. Subversive, haunting, fantastical but all too real and relevant.