If you leave, you die. If you die, you stay. So say the ghost women’s chorus of Sour Cherry, Natalia Theodoridou’s loose reimagining of “Bluebeard”. Told in the style of a fairytale, the novel follows an unnamed man from birth, through the blights that infect those around him, and through successive marriages to women who are unable to survive the rot he brings.

“Here is the key, I’ll give it to you: this is a fairy tale because I need the distance.”

From this opening—ripe with implication—the narrator signals that this story is being actively crafted with the reader’s complicity, and that the reliability of the details is always in doubt. It is a refrain picked up constantly, with all things coming into question as the story’s speaker muses aloud to a “you” whose identity slowly resolves, wondering what she can get away with in her narration, what will break the immersion. The start hints at the story’s aftermath—the ghosts, the narrator and the room they occupy—and those hints multiply throughout, as interruptions. The ghosts and the narrator, as well as the act of telling the tale, are not simply a framing mechanism, to be forgotten once the bulk of the story is underway. Instead, they are part of an approach that informs the entirety of the text, unignorably.

This is part of the most successful aspect of Theodoridou’s craft: the absolute inextricability of this story from its medium. From those intrusions of direct address, to the unreliability of the narrator, to the inclusion of lighting and stage directions, this is a text absolutely resistant to immersion in the “streamlined prose” sense. It relies always on how words are used, mused over, in context-driven ways, rather than trying to evoke the experience of a visual medium through text.

It is rather a trope to call something “a story about stories”, but with the extent of Sour Cherry’s dedication to musing on the way narrative is created, it’s an impossible label to resist, and its resolution here is far more complete and thoughtful than in many other stories so described. Some of the success lies in the material—the benefit of a retelling is the presumed familiarity of the reader with the text, leaving an easy way to create narrative texture by playing with the how around the understood what.

But the characteristics of the retelling genre are not the only texture that makes this retelling interesting. Theodoridou embraces unreliability—and the ambiguity brought by unreliability—emphatically. The story’s recipient is explicitly told some of this is not truly how the story went down, and that reality is not always revealed or implied subsequently. There are absences that must be read around, and accepted.

While the original story focuses on female curiosity, Sour Cherry if anything plays up the opposite: the narrator’s emphatic resistance to curiosity at all turns. The folktale is something to be consciously interpreted through the text, its themes always up for reworking.

But Sour Cherry is not all abstract philosophising about the nature of narrative. In those parts where the narrator gets fully immersed in her telling, the story veers deeply into the realm of the senses. There is a heavy emphasis on smells, atmospheres, tastes—full of rot and pickles, making me hungry and sick at the same time. There is an abundance of enticing sensory description, which is constantly overturned into spoilage, emphasising the decay by contrast to the earlier rich description. And, throughout, the eponymous cherries, stained on lips and scenting bodies and air.

Food is a signifier—it can make or break immersion in the version of the story the narrator is inventing for us. It says “we both know what this mythic pseudo-Europe is supposed to look like”, even as the reader—with their imagined nitpicks—is the butt of the joke.

But when the food turns to rot, alongside mouldering leaves and black fungus leeching from the walls, all that complex abstraction turns to pure atmosphere, turning the tables and going straight for evocative prose. Theodoridou is at his most vivid in these sections, full of palpable misery and destruction, grounded in familiar, pervasive scents. For every scene of rich cherries and dark pickles, there are three of musted, crumbling houses, damp, foetid and dusty, the effectiveness made intense by familiarity.

If there is a downside to all of this—and I’m not certain there is—it comes in the pacing. The narrative structure is unusual, evoking an eternal prelude, waiting for a penny to drop that doesn’t fall, well into the last ten percent of the book. At times, this feels like another part of the narrator’s arsenal, the unreliability and subversion both increasing tension by withholding precisely the part of the story that the audience would expect. But there are moments when it wavers a little, and instead feels like an overextended prelude to a story we might never get. This is only compounded by a metaphor dropped late in the game—the idea that this constantly referenced rot is intended to signify the blight of the rich on their communities—but never fully developed, as at that point in the story there is little time left in which to do so. Had there been more foreshadowing, it could have been yet another complex note in this story, and, had there been slightly less of it in the last few pages, it could have been a throwaway remark. But instead it lingers, nagging at me.

The longer I sit with that nagging, the more I wonder if there was foreshadowing I didn’t catch, and more going on than I saw. It’s that kind of book—demanding a reread to capture all the tricks I will have missed the first time. Maybe this was one.

All this back and forth between the narrator and the unnamed “you” comes to a culmination entirely in keeping with the complexity before—much is left to the reader’s interpretation, many of the ideas thrown up throughout are subverted, discarded or complicated, and while there are potential resolutions available, none are firmly indicated. For a story so much about the act of crafting a narrative and discarding what is unwanted, this felt the most fitting possible end, and a culmination of the collaboration that has been invited throughout.

It is precisely this commitment to the bit, using every single tool in the storytelling arsenal to reflect back on this malleable act of creation, that makes Sour Cherry so compelling. Nothing is wasted, nothing is unused, and the effect is at once subtle and intense—like no fairytale retelling I have read, and yet the inevitable culmination of the genre. We have stories subverting every part of fairytales, why not stories about the very act of their telling, too?

I was very much looking forward to this book, but in the end it just took me way too long to get through as it was *very* slow-paced. It isn’t a bad book, but just not for me. Maybe I didn’t “get it” - I was certainly pretty confused for a lot of the book!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for access to the e-arc.

I really wanted to like Sour Cherry, but unfortunately, it didn’t work for me. Despite the promising premise, I didn’t get any of the feminist undertones I was hoping for. Instead, it felt more like a repackaged Bluebeard retelling—with a bisexual twist—but without much depth or reinvention. I kept waiting for the narrative to subvert or challenge the original tale in a meaningful way, but it never quite got there. Honestly, I think part of the disappointment came from the synopsis on the back of the book, which felt a bit misleading. It set up expectations the story just didn’t deliver on.

Please see the link for the full review.

I have reviewed Sour Cherry for online book sales and recommendation company LoveReading.co.uk, I’ve chosen this title as a Liz Pick of the Month for April.

This felt like a very unique read to me with its reimagining of the Bluebeard. It made the fairy-tale more relevant to current times

i think this book is all too relevant to todays society and times we are sadly finding ourselves in. and it was done ina unique way so it didnt feel like we were too bogged down with learning or keep "seeing" these types of narratives to keep ourself aware and informed.
the book was a retelling and i think it did it really well.
there chaotic nature of the telling felt like it only added to the themes here and i actually thought this added element was a brilliant new level to the story. you felt that unsettled angst throughout because of it. and you could relate more and get on board more with the terrible situation the main character finds herself in.
the past wives wasnt delved into with horrific detail but that almost made it more stark. just another victim...
i think this book managed to not make you feel too heavy un reading it. but it also managed to add all the bit and pieces you need to start thinking about this topic.
and of course all the "lessons " aside, without all that it was a really good book.

Lyrical writing for a retelling of the tale of Bluebeard. A menacing and mysterious man, a lot of wives, ghosts and abuse. A dark and haunting novel.

This was an enjoyable read. It wasn't quite what I expected, but I was still drawn into the story and found it interesting.

I didn’t realise this was a retelling of the fairytale Bluebeard. Although it was extremely well written it just wasn’t to my liking. I found it a bit too chaotic and I didn’t love all of the topics involved in the book. However this is just my opinion and If you like the sound of it, I urge you to read it yourself as you may love it!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity.

I won’t lie, I had no idea this was a Bluebeard retelling until about 30% in (and then had to have a quick google). I’m not sure I fully loved this book? It’s very well written and feels chaotic chopping and changing through all the wives. Think it was quite repetitive and I enjoyed the story with Eunice/Tristan the most. Don’t think it’s a bad book, it’s just not for me!

A Bluebeard retelling with a modern twist. I love how the author mentioned the walking on fire embers, this is a traditional ritualistic dance in Bulgaria which is practiced thill this day and it's indeed magical. The storytelling is disjointed at times and there are no quotation marks, but this is because of the person who is telling the story and the situation she's in. The only negative I have for this book is the repetition at the end, the fairy tale repeating itself with no clear descriptions of how some wives perished, most of them were just mentioned briefly. The most full and developed story was the one of the first wife and the son Tristan. I loved him as a character and found his narrative very touching and hopeful. Overall this is an exceptional book, I would highly recommend it if you love retellings and historical fiction. The horror is light as there are no gruesome descriptions only short mentioning of things happening around and because of the lord. But the situation our storyteller is in is really horrific. The story it's heavy on its metaphors regarding domestic violence, which is not my favorite, but it's done very well. My rating is 4 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC.

if you loved the fairytale of Bluebeard you will love this ..a fairytale for adults.

It is a well told story with ghosts of the past and fears for the future.

A boy is told a tale of something awful that has happened and this will follow him and dictate his future.

It has a moral of sorts and it is a q modern read that will get you thinking..