Description

Natalia Theodoridou’s haunting debut novel, Sour Cherry, is a captivating reimagining of the classic tale of Bluebeard, one of folklore’s darkest figures, transformed here into a profound meditation on toxic masculinity, feminist rebellion, and the haunting folktales of our modern era.

The story begins with Agnes, a grieving woman who endures the loss of her own infant and is summoned to the lord’s great manor to care for the nobleman’s child. But something about this baby is unsettlingly strange: his nails grow quicker than natural, his skin bears the scent of rich earth, and his eyes evoke the sinister mystery of deep woods. As the boy grows into adulthood, disaster seems to follow wherever he goes—trees wither, fruit rots, and a curse of decay hangs over the realm, leading the townspeople to mistrust and blame him.

Despite the darkness surrounding his life, the young man marries, and his wife bears a son of their own. Yet tragedy strikes once again—and repeats endlessly—wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague. The women whose lives he touches linger as ghosts who cannot escape him, forming a spectral chorus trying desperately to communicate their truths. They reach out urgently to our narrator, who seeks to unravel and explain to a skeptical world precisely what horror has taken place.

United in suffering, the ghostly women agree upon one haunting truth about the powerful lord who both loved them and destroyed them: if any woman tries to escape, death inevitably follows; but even death cannot free them from his clutches.

In Sour Cherry, Theodoridou confronts longstanding societal justifications for toxic relationships and the pervasive effects of patriarchal power. With echoes of authors like Kelly Link, Angela Carter, and Carmen Maria Machado, this mesmerizing novel explores the complicated emotions and unnerving logic behind why hearts sometimes remain captive to the very monsters who harm them.