Sour Cherry: A fiercely haunting gothic horror novel examining gender and power, reimagining the fairytale Bluebeard
Natalia Theodoridou
Apr 2025 · Wildfire · Narrated by Erifyli Gigante
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9 hr 1 min
Unabridged
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'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
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.
'[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
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.
'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
Something terrible has happened.
In a mysterious apartment filled with ghosts, o...
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About the author
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.
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 Fant...
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