“He was wrong, of course, about what is natural. In her years with her husband, Eunice had come to understand a thing about nature, the one that surrounds 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? Still, people make their choices.”

“Easier to tell you of a man who was a myth, a natural disaster, a fairy-tale thing, than to say your father is a wife-beater, a rapist, a murderer.”

To say that Natalia Theodoridou’s Sour Cherry (2025) is a retelling of the Bluebeard fairy tale is reductive. Like Angela Carter or Tanith Lee, Theodoridou has written a fairy tale that cuts right to the heart of why we tell fairy tales. This is a book about how violent and unfair the world can be, and how we convey this basic truth to children without hurting them. Theodoridou knows that fantasy can be used as pure escapism, to sugar-coat unpalatable truths and give impressionable minds an unrealistic idea of what the world is like. But at the same time, he knows that sometimes the only way to approach certain truths is from some distance, that fantasy is capable of providing a language for dealing with difficult subjects, that fairy tales have endured for thousands of years because they reveal timeless truths about human nature. Sour Cherry is a powerful and fiercely feminist novel, even more impressive for being a debut.

Sour Cherry is told by an unnamed narrator who is trapped in an apartment full of ghosts with her child. Something terrible lies in one of the rooms, so partially in order to distract him, and partially to explain to him what has happened, she tells her child a tale. The story is about the child’s father. It is also a variation on the story of Bluebeard, the man who murders his wives when they discover his secrets. As the narrator’s story progresses, we follow a fairy tale about a strange boy whose nails grow uncontrollably, who as he grows up leaves mysterious plagues, misfortune and death in his wake. As the story continues, we come to understand that the narrator, through the medium of the fairy tale, is telling the story of her life with the child’s father and the abuse she, and the women who came before her, have suffered at his hands. 

To balance two tales at once like this, in a way that the fairy tale narrative stands in for the real world acts of violence, rape and murder, requires a deft narrative hand indeed. Theodoridou proves himself equal to the task. Reading the novel is an exercise in narrative puzzle-solving, rendered profound through Theodoridou’s gorgeous prose and the unflinching honesty with which he approaches his subject matter. The narrator tells her story carefully, because she knows that it is important to tell the child about the violence his father has committed, but in a way that will not further damage an already-traumatized child. But equally, she must do justice to this story for her sake and the sake of the other wives. The way that Theodoridou reveals the real-world violence that is behind the fairy-tale over the course of the narrative is a wonder to behold. The interludes set in the “real” world, in which the narrator and her child are trapped in the apartment with the ghosts while they wait to be found by the father or the narrator’s friend who could help them escape, ratchet up the narrative tension but also remind us of the lived experience behind the fairy tale story. The ghosts of the other women the father has killed and abused take issue with how the narrator is telling the story, she has disagreements with them over whether or not she is misrepresenting what happened, and ultimately gives over her voice so that the ghosts themselves can tell their stories of how they lived with abuse and fear. 

This is complimented by the lush fairy tale sections, told in gorgeous prose, which heartbreakingly manage to convey the pain and suffering beneath these stories whilst still working as an engaging fantasy narrative. But Theodoridou and the narrator are both aware that these stories can be used to lie to children as often as they’re used to tell the truth. Theodoridou brilliantly interrogates this throughout the book. In particular, there is a section involving Tristan, another son of the abusive father. As the narrator tells his story, she is aware that the structure of Tristan’s story, his struggle against his abusive father, is close to the typical hero narratives we are used to hearing in many fairy tale influenced stories, and she sees the effect it has on the child, giving him an anchor of narrative hope in an otherwise bleak tale. But she knows all too well that this is not this kind of story, that one of the important lessons that she must teach the child is that Tristan does not triumph over his father and instead is another victim of his violence. Throughout this section, Theodoridou shows us how fairy tales and folk tales play with the familiar heroic archetypes that we are so used to hearing, but also how these can be powerfully subverted to explore new meanings and perspectives. 

Sour Cherry is a powerful and devastating read. Theodoridou has written an uncompromising book about gendered violence that demonstrates the power of fairy tales to address challenging real-world issues. The novel is a crucial argument for how fantasy need not be escapist in the face of life’s horrors, but rather can provide a scaffolding that lets us better understand the darker side of human nature. That it is a debut novel only makes it all the more impressive, and I look forward to seeing where Theodoridou goes with his work in the future.

Sour Cherry is available now – you can order your copy HERE