The Cherry Robbers

De: Sarai Walker

Narrado por: January LaVoy

"Sarai Walker has done it again. With The Cherry Robbers she upends the Gothic ghost story with a fiery feminist zeal." —Maria Semple

The highly anticipated second novel from Sarai Walker, following her “slyly subversive” (EW) cult-hit Dietland—a feminist gothic about the lone survivor of a cursed family of sisters, whose time may finally be up.

IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.

INSTEAD IT WAS THE LAST.

Iris Chapel and her five elegant sisters, all of them heiresses to the Chapel firearms fortune, live cloistered in a lavish Victorian mansion. Neglected by both a distant, workaholic father and a mentally troubled mother—who believes their home is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons—the sisters have grown up with only each other for company. They long to escape the eerie fairy tale of their childhood and move forward into the modern world, but for young women in 1950s Connecticut, the only way out is through marriage.

Yet it soon becomes clear that for the Chapel sisters, marriage equals death.

When the eldest sister walks down the aisle, tragedy strikes. The bride dies mysteriously the very next day, leaving her family and the town in shock. But this is just the beginning of a chain of disasters that will make each woman wonder whether true love will kill her, too. Only Iris, the second-youngest, finds a way to escape—but can she outrun the family curse forever?

Sarai Walker, the acclaimed author of the cult-hit novel Dietland, building off the Gothic tradition of Shirley Jackson, brings to life this riveting, deliciously twisted feminist tale, a gorgeous and provocative thriller about the legacy of male power and the cost of female freedom.

©2022 Sarai Walker (P)2022 by HarperCollins Publishers

Captivating

This was a book that was hard to put down even though I had to stop several times to take a break. I don’t think I will soon forget it.

Women Rights

Opening yourself to “feelings “ or impressions of your dead loved ones can be a helpful grieving process. I have experienced when our son was murdered 9 years ago

The story we all need

I waited to read this one. I was too scared that my expectations would be dashed. But, finally, I have read this stunning work and am happy to report that it was everything I could have dreamed of and more.

The characters are deep. They are individuals with lives, purposes, and desires. Even the men (who definitely take a backseat in this story) are somehow, in just a few sentences, turned into nuanced humans with unique qualities that make them memorable and district. I was able to connect in some way with each of them. From the loving housemaid who tried her best to help the 6 daughters of the house feel cared for to the jerk who took away the oldest sister.

The plot is not the point - and I love it. We know what's going to happen in almost every part of this book based on the summary. Yet, as the girls grew up, I was spellbound. As each sister met her fate, I was awestruck. Absolutely nothing in this novel was shocking. There is no twist. But such is the power of this author and this story that I could not have cared less.

This is not a story I would recommend to just anyone. There are things that would rub some people the wrong way. For instance, some might argue that the conclusion is weak or that there isn't enough closure. I would argue that Walker's choice to not answer a lot of these bigger questions is purposeful, poignant, and perfect. This family's curse doesn't need a "higher power" or a "larger purpose" to be significant. This story taps into the most hidden, raw, and often ignored aspects of the normalized trauma women have been experiencing for generations and, in proper Gothic fashion, externalizes that trauma in order to show how it passes from mother to daughter. This story is meant to be felt and intuited. Walker has written a novel so compelling that there is no reason readers can't draw their own conclusions. She doesn't need to spell things out for us. If you can't handle that or you prefer that authors explain everything with heavy-handed precision, this is not the story for you.

Tragic and beautiful

I was completely heart broken by the end of this, and found myself weeping multiple times as the story unfolded.

The price women paid and are still paying for/during childbirth is unbelievable. Each woman has her story, no matter how easy her labor was, and this book is all about the childbirth story of one woman, and its consequences.

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Couldn’t stop listening

I was captivated by this book and have recommended it highly to my friends. I raced through it!

Whew- I really liked this one.

Is the family cursed? I couldn’t stop listening! I loved the way the author weaved this tale. I only gave it 4 stars because I wanted just a little bit more resolution at the end. That being said- I loved it and will absolutely recommend it.

Ugh!

Long story. Beautifully written but such a long story with no closure. Why? Why was this family “cursed?”

Brilliant

It’s beautiful and heartbreaking and uniquely feminist. It’s nothing like her first book and also very much a companion to it. The narration is lovely and these sisters will be staying with me for a long time.

Reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House

This could have just been a unique spin on the Sarah Winchester story, but what we got was so much more. My spoiler free TLDR is that this is my favorite book I've read in quite a while, between the excellent voice acting and the engaging story that had me hooked from the first words I cannot say enough good things about this story. Below I'll go into spoilers.

Spoilers ahead:

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We're told right at the beginning what to expect out of the novel; it was going to be a sad story about the untimely deaths of five young women with a possible paranormal element. Each of the Chapel sisters could easily have served as nothing more than set dressing to the ultimate story of Iris, as a matter of fact, it almost feels like we're warned to not get emotionally invested in each of these characters. In spite of that warning, it's impossible not to be drawn to each of the sisters, to either find aspects of yourself or someone you know and love contained within them. I found my own sisters in Aster and Zelle, I found my wife in Daphne, and I found myself in Calla. As the story progressed, I really came to dread when the moment came that these characters met their end. I wanted so much for their fates to change, a feeling that Sarai indulged by Iris fantasizing about the lives each of them could have had.

The relentless tragedy isn't the only horror in this story either. At it's heart, the story is about how few options women had available to them. Much of the story is focused around the sisters being expected to find a husband, their dreams be damned, it's also focused around how common it was for men to gaslight women as well as the reality of just sending women away to an Asylum if they didn't conform to the stuffy expectations of the men around them. The worst fate in the story wasn't the violent deaths of the Chapel sisters, is was the confinement of the matriarch.

I picked up this novel expecting a ghost story, what I got instead was a deep character driven story with some very real things to say about womanhood. It has left me feeling very melancholy and dare I say haunted, but very satisfied. I've read Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House every year for over a decade, and I think this is a very fitting novel to add to my annual reading list.

try it!

Unique story with well- developed characters and plenty of plot surprises.

The narrator is my new favorite.