Ask a Bookseller: ‘Sour Cherry’ by Natalia Theodoridou

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

“There are books that you can't put down. And then there are books that, even when you put them down, they just stay with you," says Katherine Nazzaro of Porter Square Books, with stores in Boston and Cambridge, Mass.

The book in the latter category — which she’s still talking about months after reading — is “Sour Cherry” by Natalia Theodoridou.

Nazzaro calls it an unorthodox retelling of Bluebeard. The story of Bluebeard involves a young bride who is told by her husband (Bluebeard) never to enter one room in their home.

When she inevitably does enter, she finds the room is filled with the bodies of his previous dead wives. This novel takes a different tack: the novel starts with a woman, Agnes, who raises Bluebeard after the death of her child.

“It sort of asks the question, who was Bluebeard before the fairy tale? You have all of these dead wives that he's collected, but somebody had to be the first dead wife. And what was life like for her before he was this fairy tale monster?”

Trigger warning: domestic violence is a main theme in this novel, whose events also include the death of a child.

Nazarro doesn’t classify this novel as horror. “In my opinion, as a big horror reader, it doesn't get scary enough. It never really delves into horror. But it's a sort of lyrical literary gothic fiction. I really did feel like it was like a physical presence with me while I was reading it.”