Sour Cherry

"A folktale, a whisper, and a dream all at once, Theodoridou’s debut is beautifully told in rhythmic, singing prose. Sour Cherry is unforgettable—one of my absolute favorites of the year." -Rory Power, New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls

"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." -Benjamin Percy, author of The Ninth Metal

"These days, there is so much talk about ‘making the reader work,’ so much talk about ‘challenging readers to think and see things in new ways.’ Despite its speculative and transgressive nature, Natalia Theodoridou’s novel Sour Cherry is a work that stands in line with such statements, yet delivers its story—the gentle truth or reminder about what it means to be alive, what it means to feel—with razor-sharp prose and diction so precise it is impossible to misunderstand. 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." -Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez and Fire Exit

"A Bluebeard retelling of profound beauty and wisdom, Sour Cherry shows us how abuse traps people in stories that help them excuse it—but also survive. Theodoridou is a novelist with a poet’s ear and a playwright’s nose for irony. His prose is lyric, yet exquisitely controlled: every word feels necessary and inevitable. Like Angela Carter, he uses fairy tale to trace the dark undercurrents of human desire. But Sour Cherry transcends the form of the fairy tale retelling. It moves like a dance, resonates like a chorus; you wake from it as from a dream. Read it and be changed." -B. Pladek, author of Dry Land

"Captivating from the first page to the last, Sour Cherry is a haunting novel that weighs in with Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw and the very best of Angela Carter—but Theodoridou writes with a magnetic strangeness that is all his own. Not many can pull off what he has, bringing new blood to folktale archetypes, blending mystery with a burgeoning, inevitable dread. Heartbreaking and tender, Sour Cherry is a dark delight. It’s so damn good I’m already looking forward to reading it again." -Natasha Calder, author of Whether Violent or Natural