Sour Cherry

Review

Theodoridou’s recent book is my small press club’s pick for June, and what a strange little book. It is a retelling, kind of, of the Bluebeard story. I think I first encountered the Bluebeard story in Stephen King’s The Shining, but probably before in some form as well. In general, I think the book is quite good. Theodoridou’s framing device for Sour Cherry features an unnamed narrator reciting the events of the tale as though they are a ghost story, presumably to “you” the reader, who also may or may not be a child.

Sometimes, the framing really worked for me. The interruptions in the story where our narrator says “you gasp” or some such pull us out enough to know that we’re being told a version of a story. The first half flew by. Theodoridou’s writing is morose. In the beginning when there is mystery and when we’re surrounded by half-knowings, it is deeply engaging and sustaining. About 1/3rd through the book, we meet a character called Tristan, in what is I think the longest chapter of the book. This chapter could stand alone as a short story, though we know (for a variety of reasons, not least of which is his namesake) that Tristan is doomed. Somewhere shortly after this chapter, the narrator’s voice began to bump against me. I realized that it started to feel more intrusive into the story. Clearly this is intended, as the final pages of the book fade into the narrator’s present and we somehow arrive at another child (how exactly is not clear to me). My read is that the narrator is the victim of intimate partner violence, and she is describing this tale to her child not because the perpetrator is Bluebeard contemporaneously, but because it isn’t a myth, it’s reality: “What else were fairy tales for, after all, if not showing you the world as it is and helping you survive it?” (page 8.)

There are some diversions and themes that I’m not sure about. We hear about cherries near constantly, to the point that I found myself wondering if I just didn’t understand the cultural importance of the cherry. It isn’t clear to me why they so permeate the women, as the soil and mold permeate the man and the house. I have some guesses but nothing I feel sure of.

I’m looking forward to discussing this with the book club! I enjoyed this enough to recommend it to folks who are interested in quashi-ghost stories and retellings, though I do think there are some parts of the writing/framing that could frustrate some readers.

Questions

1. What are the cherries doing in the story?
2. Of all the wives, really only Eunice is named. Why does Julian get a name?
3. The story starts with Agnes, who meets Cook, and who eventually becomes Cook. Why do we start with Agnes?
4. Did the framing device of the black-bordered ‘chapters’ work for you?
5. It seems like the narrator chooses to stay with Bluebeard in order to stay with the ghosts. Does that sound right?

(These aren’t necessarily questions I’ll bring to the club, just things I’m thinking about at the moment.)

Notes

• p8 - What else were fairy tales for, after all, if not showing you the world as it is and helping you survive it?
• p39 - But then she remembered Robert was dead, and she felt such a stabbing, such searing pain in her chest that she became sick. And when she was back to herself, she wondered: Whatever is the point of grief?
• p71 - When people have nothing, hurt is all they have.
• p89 - “Truth is a dangerous thing,” the Shopkeeper said eventually. “It has teeth, which it uses to eat uncertainty, to eat possibilities. I like my stories to be just stories, and in their telling, to leave the world with more possibility than it had before.”
• p119 - Halt must have seen something in his face, because he wrapped his arm around Tristan’s shoulders and gently pulled him away as the chanting swelled and a man was took his first steps into the pit.
  • TB: Emphasis mine. Pretty odd word construction that isn’t mirrored elsewhere, but seems intentional.
• p121 - It occurred to him, then, that maybe Anne was important to his mother for the same reasons Halt was important to him. Someone to define her as an entity distinct from her husband, his father. Someone to show her that life could be different.
• p142 - The young man seized Tristan’s hand as he spoke those words that I know can break a heart apart and put it back together again: “I believe you,” he said. “I believe you.”the RL stuff to
• p160 - She remembered a story Agnes had told her once, about curiosity, a set of keys, wives disobeying their husbands one after the other, bearing witness to his awful deeds.
  • TB: this feels like the first overt reference to the Bluebeard story (apart from the physical description I guess).
• p173 - Eunice had come to understand a thing about nature, the one that houses us and the one inside. It is what distorts, what rots and infects, what festers. Is anything man can do or be unnatural? Are all the horrors and all the monsters that nature births not of nature itself?
• p184 - The third wife ¶ didn’t even go looking…
  • TB: I think this is the first chapter in which the chapter heads begin to flow directly into the sentences. It happens inconsistently going forward, primarily when referring to wives by number (but not always). Why?
• p262 - It’s not as hard as you think, he replied. I’ll always find you, no matter where you go.