PERSPECTIVE(S): A Novel, Laurent Binet being his most sibylline self

PERSPECTIVE(S): A Novel
LAURENT BINET (tr. Sam Taylor)
FSG (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A pulse-quickening murder mystery set in Renaissance Florence by the renowned author of HHhH.

As dawn breaks over the city of Florence on New Year’s Day 1557, Jacopo da Pontormo is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him are the frescoes he labored over for more than a decade—masterpieces all, rivaling the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. When guards search his quarters, they find an obscene painting of Venus and Cupid—with the face of Venus replaced by that of Maria de’ Medici, the Duke of Florence’s oldest daughter. The city erupts in chaos.

Who could have committed these crimes: murder and lèse-majesté? Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation. Letters start to fly back and forth—between Maria and her aunt Catherine de’ Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and the scheming Piero Strozzi; and between Vasari and Michelangelo—carrying news of political plots and speculations about the identity of Pontormo’s killer. The truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot center of European art and intrigue.

Bursting with characters and historical color, Laurent Binet’s Perspective(s) is a whodunit like no other—a labyrinthine murder mystery that shows us Renaissance Florence as we’ve never seen it before. This is a dark, dazzling, unforgettable read.

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My Review: From the framing device of a trove of discovered letters forward, this book represents the kind of games I most enjoy authors playing. Binet's the son of an historian, and it shows...for good and ill. The good is the playfulness of his choices to focus narrative attention on; the ill is his necessary fictionalizing of real figures of the well-studied past at times slipping into...absurdity, silliness, OTT recherche Proustian locutionary excess?...well, too-muchness, anyhow.

It is, I'll say clearly and now, well worth the effort to accept without engaging too much critical overdrive. (My worst readerly failing.)

Sort out fact from fiction exactly as much as suits you; nothing in your pleasure will change knowing more than you're told on the pages of the story about the people (note I did not say characters) on these pages. The murdered man emerges as we all do from the memories of those around us, as a blurry-edged shadow. It is unclear to me if he was actually guilty of lèse-majesté—and I do not care to establish this. Or any other of the many interesting side-lights Author Binet shines onto Savonarola's Florence. (I'd be a really bad puritan. I've always got a question they don't like, and am absolutely guaranteed to perform every sex act they abominate...in public, to show how they can't tell *me* what to do!)

The character Vasari is, in a word, adroit. No matter what he's asked to do, or be, or fix, he's got it, understands the assignment and the subtext, has a guy who knows a guy on his side. It's always good to know a Vasari because he might be oily but he's effective. People in power love Vasari-type guys. If you're the guy he knows who's got the connections he can use, you will never get public credit—that's all his—but he won't forget you. Until he does.

No, not a bestie to rely on, but a great guy to read about, and a top-notch sleuth.

As the pages flew by I realized I was in that reading flow state that's ever elusive. I was deep into Author Binet's imagination (Michelangelo as gossipy old queen, Marie de'Medici as old queen in political hot water) and unaware of the ever-advancing hour. When I closed the cover at two-thirty, I was sad to see it all end. I'm not sure why the very slightly repetitious recaps Binet's Vasari offers the reader to explain the resolution of the killing didn't weigh more heavily on my pleasure in the read...my conclusion is that I like Vasari's very natural-feeling shifts in tone. These do, however, slow the story's roll a but more than I myownself would prefer (that missing half-star above). Vasari is, as mentioned before, an operator, so he's bound to have different conversational registers for different people. In an epistolary novel that's both easy to present and easy to explain. No one in this collection of invented letters has an overview of the situation, just one corner of the composition, so everyone's responding to events as honestly as they feel safe doing; but they're all watching their tone because this was a dangerous time (see link to Savonarola above). It's similar to the effect of my doted-on The Case of Cem.

I'm delighted with this read. I'm recommending it to most all y'all because it's fun to see an author summon the attitudes of people long-dead in this honest, ambivalent way. I don't think the readers averse to history will be that tempted, though I hope one or two will try it out.

THE CREATION OF HALF-BROKEN PEOPLE, new African Gothic novel from Windham-Campbell Prize winner SIPHIWE GLORIA NDLOVU

THE CREATION OF HALF-BROKEN PEOPLE
SIPHIWE GLORIA NDLOVU
House of Anansi Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.99 ebook, available tomorrow

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Stupendous African Gothic, by the winner of Yale University’s Windham–Campbell Prize

A modern Gothic story set on the African continent, The Creation of Half-Broken People tells the tale of a nameless woman plagued by visions. She works for the Good Foundation and its museum, a place filled with artifacts from the family’s exploits in Africa, the Good family members all being descendants of Captain John Good, of King Solomon’s Mines fame.

Our heroine is happy with her association with the Good family, until one day she comes across a group of people protesting outside the museum. Instigating the protesters is an ancient woman, who our heroine knows is not real. The nameless woman knows too that the secrets of her past have returned. After this encounter, she finds herself living first in an attic and then in a haunted castle, her life anything but normal as her own intangible inheritance unfolds through the women who inhabit her visions.

With a knowing nod to classics of the Gothic genre, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu weaves the threads of a complex colonial history into the present as she examines the collusion of colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism in creating and normalizing a certain kind of womanhood.

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My Review: What I loved about this read started from the first line: "There was a time before this. I did not always live in the attic."

I defy anyone who reads my reviews not to want to know what happens next.

One thing that happens is our narrator (nameless here, and like the second Mrs. de Winter, seamlessly unobservedly nameless throughout) meets and becomes entangled with the ominously named "John B. Good IX"—did your arm hairs just prickle with anticipatory dread or is it just me?—at the scary age of twenty-one. Legally responsible, emotionally clueless. Truly a moment in one's life when The Worst can happen without any way to avoid it.

*gleeful hand-rubbing*

So the story unfolds as a heartfelt homage to the centuries of gothic novels and tales that have come before it. The events, the relationships, the emotional devastations that come to each living one of us, all occur in a logical order as demanded by the arc of acceptance in emotional maturation. The struggles, the demands we place on Life for it to conform to our momentary desires, the sudden storms of others' emotional demands blowing our lifeships ever farther from safe harbors...all present and accounted for. As an experienced purveyor of stories...she's a filmmaker, several earlier novels to her credit, graduate of Stanford's film studies program...Author Ndlovu doesn't slow her roll for anything unnecessary, or lard in the always tempting useless "grace note" that reduces the reader's momentum.

Lush descriptive language will always get praise from me, I enjoy it for its own sake, and this is replete with it. It's a plus that I, old white US man, am taken into a sensory world not already familiar to me. I'm also fully on board with the not-subtle anti-colonial and anti-patriarchal messaging of the entire enterprise. What, then, explains my chary star rating? Surely my delighted warbling comes in a full-five review!

Nothing's perfect. I kept feeling the ghost of gothics past brushing by me, trope by trope. It's not a *bad* thing in and of itself, the story told here is remixed from the very best of its forerunners. It is, however, still a remix. I do not have a way to tell a gothic story that breaks new ground, not being a supergenius or time-traveling visitor from the storytelling future. Yet as I kept reading (and I never stopped from giddy-up to whoa) I got these flashes of "that's from this story!" I do not know if they were precisely the ones Author Ndlovu had as inspirations. I do feel, when that sensation comes very frequently in a story, a small sense of disconnection from my full-on engagement with the narrative flow.

I doubt this would present anyone but the most seasoned readers any kind of problem. It did not reduce my enjoyment of this story's merits by much at all. I recommend it to all y'all who want to read a deeply emotionally resonant story.

BIG CHIEF, debut Native American political/corruption story about loyalty and grief

BIG CHIEF
JON HICKEY
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available tomorrow

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: There There meets The Night Watchman in this gripping literary debut about power and corruption, family, and facing the ghosts of the past.

Mitch Caddo, a young law school graduate and aspiring political fixer, is an outsider in the homeland of his Anishinaabe ancestors. But alongside his childhood friend, Tribal President Mack Beck, he runs the government of the Passage Rouge Nation, and with it, the tribe’s Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. On the eve of Mack’s reelection, their tenuous grip on power is threatened by a nationally known activist and politician, Gloria Hawkins, and her young aide, Layla Beck, none other than Mack’s estranged sister and Mitch’s former love. In their struggle for control over Passage Rouge, the campaigns resort to bare-knuckle political gamesmanship, testing the limits of how far they will go—and what they will sacrifice—to win it all.

But when an accident claims the life of Mitch’s mentor, a power broker in the reservation’s political scene, the election slides into chaos and pits Mitch against the only family he has. As relationships strain to their breaking points and a peaceful protest threatens to become an all-consuming riot, Mitch and Layla must work together to stop the reservation’s descent into violence.

Thrilling and timely, Big Chief is an unforgettable story about the search for belonging—to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance.

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My Review: I Pearl-Ruled There There. I almost Pearl-Ruled this book. The reason I didn't, in spite of the irksome meandering of the plot, is that I liked Mitch and didn't like the coruscating cloud of people in Orange's book. I think there's a deeper...difference...in these stories than I am accustomed to. The characters in Tommy Orange's novel never felt distinctive or differentiated as I read that first segment. Hickey's characters, Mitch in particular, were more fleshed out, which allowed me to get into the twisty story. But both novels share a similarly alienating absence of interest in building tension for all they're both stories about identity-forming in the crucible of interpersonal conflict.

I am all over stories of power addicts misusing their hits of the drug. It feels evergreen and timely at the same moment of storytelling..."this could be 1888, 1988, 2008, and I'd be in the same rooms among the same people" says my headliner note...so I'm better able to get past the messy, not-obvious-why-they're-happening PoV shifts. I was sometimes a little fuddled about Mack's hold over Mitch, a lawyer who's cynical yet still young enough to believe the law has force of its own. Mack has no such illusions (nor does his political opponent Gloria) so he's, um, pragmatic and elozable. Mitch? Not sure if he's willfully blind to Mack's, um, character traits or simply prefers him to other political animals because Mack's familiar to Mitch. Mitch uses his lawyerly (though not legal) skills to fix events in Mack's favor but he's not crossing his personal ethical boundaries.

I felt immersed in the Passage Rouge Nation. I felt I understood why people love the place. I was on board for the ways and means Mack adopted to effect change, so truly *got* how he lost his moral way. I mistrusted his political opponent/loudly activist Gloria. While believing she was at least half sincere in her desire to reform the world, I felt it was not so much it wouldn't line her pockets. My evil little inner cynic got a good outing among these people.

As to why there are not-quite four full stars, I never fully bought into the plot to retain power Mack set in motion, as it seemed out of proportion thus guaranteed to blow up and cause him worse problems. Mitch saw this, I think, as a failing but he and Mack want the same outcome and share so much history; now how much sense of self does he care to put on the line to achieve a goal? Mitch is a perpetual outsider, which I relate to deeply, as well as a carrier of nasty generational trauma. It was clear to me as I read past the point I nearly tapped out that Author Hickey gets something profound about Mitch. He is among the few who is capable of making his trauma into a source of power.

I think the real reason I found this story so powerfully involving all comes down to my sense of connection to Mitch. Yeah, I'd've liked less muddling through the plot's interesting intertwining strands; I might've enjoyed Mack more had he not possessed what felt like a convenient penchant for making own goals. In the end I allowed this debut novel its imperfections because I feel, and I hope, Author Hickey will be back on our shelves soon with an even more accomplished story for us.

ANTIMATTER BLUES, Edward Ashton's second Mickey7 novel

ANTIMATTER BLUES (Mickey7 #2)
EDWARD ASHTON
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Summer has come to Niflheim. The lichens are growing, the six-winged bat-things are chirping, and much to his own surprise, Mickey Barnes is still alive―that last part thanks almost entirely to the fact that Commander Marshall believes that the colony’s creeper neighbors are holding an antimatter bomb, and that Mickey is the only one who’s keeping them from using it. Mickey’s just another colonist now. Instead of cleaning out the reactor core, he spends his time these days cleaning out the rabbit hutches. It’s not a bad life.

It’s not going to last.

It may be sunny now, but winter is coming. The antimatter that fuels the colony is running low, and Marshall wants his bomb back. If Mickey agrees to retrieve it, he’ll be giving up the only thing that’s kept his head off of the chopping block. If he refuses, he might doom the entire colony. Meanwhile, the creepers have their own worries, and they’re not going to surrender the bomb without getting something in return. Once again, Mickey finds the fate of two species resting in his hands. If something goes wrong this time, though, he won’t be coming back.

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My Review: I AM A VERY BAD MAN. I read this book in November 2022, made some notes on a document last computer, and...brain being its usual saboteur self...filed it as "done and dusted" thus forgetting to write an actual review.

Thank all those useless gods I never delete documents.

This is textbook idiotry. Guard against this carelessness, all y'all, and you will maintain your good standing with the review aggregators. Perfectionism is Public Enemy #1 for book reviewers, that is if they want to have their pick of the goodest of the good stuff to read. I am super lucky in that I do get a lot of excellent reads, but a chunk of disappointing turndowns too.

But enough about me, let's discuss Author Ashton's second Mickey7 novel. Well...this is Blogger so no one can talk to me here so I'm more or less soliloquizing. Still.

I hope you've read Mickey7 and seen Mickey 17 by now. If not I strongly urge you to do so; the latter in a theater. I'll say that the film deserves a sequel mostly because Niflheim is such a great visual experience, and seeing that cast (as necessarily amended) perform this story would be a major hoot. Robert Pattinson's endearing turn as an Expendable reformed many many times...eighteen to be precise...was pitch-perfect. This idea of slave labor made palatable to bourgeois sensibilities by being done by not-quite humans is one I've enjoyed since encountering it in Doctor Who's Eleventh Doctor episode "The Almost People" in 2011. I'm quite sure the earlier written versions, eg Cordwainer Smith's Scanners or the opposite end of the social scale of Richard K. Morgan's "Meths,", provided some inspiration for the Expendables and are due a lot of credit, but for me seeing the embodiment of the slave class as people-but-not-quite created by technology was a key a-ha moment.

Mickey7, now back to being Mickey Barnes after the events of the first book, is no longer considered an Expendable. He is also now the only person on Niflheim who can communicate with the planet's aboriginal inhabitants, the creepers. Interspecies harmony is, as always seems to be the case when equals share territory, conditional and intermittent. As this story opens, things are about to bust into open conflict because the creepers have The Bomb, just as the colonists need to use it for the fuel they'll need to survive a Niflheim winter. (Funny how it's always okay for the colonizers to have The Bomb but never the aboriginals.)

Hijinks of the bloodiest, most lethal sort seem destined to ensue. Of course the whole plot hinges on whether and how they ensue, or don't, and whether poor schlemiel Mickey7 (no more intellectually gifted now he's no longer considered an Expendable) can get The Bomb's urgently needed fissile material back from the very anxious creepers.

As he can communicate with them after a fashion, he's privy to a fact...the creepers seem to have another enemy besides the colonists...that could bring about a more secure peace as well as get The Bomb's fissile material back before winter comes to freeze the colonists into personcicles. Nothing like ganging up on a common enemy to create a warm glow of camaraderie, is there.

Shorter and lighter than Mickey7, this read was from the off one I'd hold to a lower standard. It's truly as fun a read as the first was, it's a solidly executed plot, and it has the great good fortune of lifting a lighter psychic load than its older sibling. Most of the hardest to explain stuff is already explained. We're more about learning Mickey7's mannerisms and exploring his human limitations. I think it was a lot less substantive (not always a bad thing), and as stated above, would greatly enjoy a film of it. Not very likely as Director Bong's not a maven for sequels.

The ethical considerations of colonialism are less weighty than those of slavery to my mind. That makes this story a very easy-to-enjoy diversion.

THE FOURTH CONSORT, latest sci-fi funfest with a serious well-made point from Edward Ashton

THE FOURTH CONSORT
EDWARD ASHTON
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A new standalone sci-fi novel from Edward Ashton, author of Mickey7 (the inspiration for the major motion picture Mickey 17).

Dalton Greaves is a hero. He’s one of humankind’s first representatives to Unity, a pan-species confederation working to bring all sentient life into a single benevolent brotherhood. That’s what they told him, anyway. The only actual members of Unity that he’s ever met are Boreau, a giant snail who seems more interested in plunder than spreading love and harmony, and Boreau’s human sidekick, Neera, who Dalton strongly suspects roped him into this gig so that she wouldn’t become the next one of Boreau’s crew to get eaten by locals while prospecting.

Funny thing, though—turns out there actually is a benevolent confederation out there, working for the good of all life. They call themselves the Assembly, and they really don’t like Unity. More to the point, they really, really don’t like Unity’s new human minions.

When an encounter between Boreau’s scout ship and an Assembly cruiser over a newly discovered world ends badly for both parties, Dalton finds himself marooned, caught between a stickman, one of the Assembly’s nightmarish shock troops, the planet’s natives, who aren’t winning any congeniality prizes themselves, and Neera, who might actually be the most dangerous of the three. To survive, he’ll need to navigate palace intrigue, alien morality, and a proposal that he literally cannot refuse, all while making sure Neera doesn’t come to the conclusion that he’s worth more to her dead than alive.

Part first contact story, part dark comedy, and part bizarre love triangle, The Fourth Consort asks an important how far would you go to survive? And more importantly, how many drinks would you need to go there?

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My Review: My god, what a place Author Ashton's head is. A ruthless, greedy giant snail, a human diplomat of murky ethics, a race of only vaguely comprehensible planetary natives so protocol-obsessed that it can be lethal to say "hello" in the wrong way...who also just so happen to have murderously invaded Earth in Dalton's lifetime. Oh, and Dalton's kinda coerced as a condition of not being killed to become the consort of their ruler. The fourth consort...and let's not get into why he's fourth.

Dalton's a Swiss-Army knife of a guy. He studied engineering...most practical people in the world, engineers...he was a soldier/POW in the invasion, a tech bro, and now works for a Galaxy-wide org that needs him as a first-contact specialist. You can see how this trajectory launched. Now that he's out doing the stuff he was hired by the Unity for, it's kind of a rude awakening. It always is when your principles and your training all get engaged with the messy, disorganzed systemless world. (That engineering background becoming even more valuable in these circs.)

What happens when the Great Awakening comes? When you are forced by events to re-evaluate everything that underpins your view of the world? You question yourself first, but assuming you're pretty well-educated, that answers only a fraction of your new questions. Permaybehaps you're not on the side of Right and Reason after all?

Poor Dalton's doing this questioning among people who will eat his flesh...his spirit's probably not very nourishing just at that moment locked as it is in crisis. His situation is rife with possibilities for own goals, and unsurprisingly there are a few. The thrust of the story, though, is the act of questioning the reality of your assumptions in the face of countervailing evidence. Dalton, using copious amounts of sarcasm and not a little facetiousness, has the courage to do this. It helps him, and us, that he's worked his whole adulthood troubleshooting systems. Better training for analysis I can't conjure.

The role of honor and duty is large in the story. Largely, it must be said, in its absence when most required. Dalton's got trouble on every side because of this absence among those meant to have his back. It resembles our own hypercapitalist world in this way. Dalton's troubles, I will say, are external; the struggling he does is, too, so I never felt I was with him in his sea of woe. I'm an observer of the results, not a participant in the process.

This is not a knock. The fact is I'm not here for that story, I'm here for a fun action-romp that takes me over some very interesting terrain. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Dalton navigate the choppy waters of Reality in a skiff formed of principles (his) and held together by pressures (the Unity's). The story does this job very well indeed, though with rather less characterization of side characters than I prefer (hence a missing half-star) Getting us through this plot, however, militated against the time needed being spent that way. That said, I was aware of wanting to spend more time with the second and third consorts and less with his fellow Unity operative. The other missing half-star comes from Dalton's attitude of..."kindness and acceptance" sounds better than "craven lickspittle sycophancy" doesn't it...for a character who does NOT deserve it. I get why Author Ashton made that choice but I do not agree with it to the point of getting frothingly furious at the way it plays out. I shouted at my Kindle from 97% on.

On balance, which I confess I lost along the way, I was amused and entertained by our hypercapitalist snail (as a former veggie gardener I'm here to tell you a better metaphor for the kind of greedy shit who runs an economy solely for personal gain there has never been), by the second and third consorts, and the rest of the cast...telling that I can't remember their names, eh what? (Wait, "Breaker" was one, I think.)

I devoutly hope Author Ashton's name is familiar to you by now from the film of his book Mickey7 (link to my review of it above). I thought that story was terrific. I think this story is, too, with minor reservations that do not vitiate the pleasures I found in the read.

THE LIBRARY GAME, bookish cozy mystery among a pack of good friends

THE LIBRARY GAME
GIGI PANDIAN
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In The Library Game, Tempest Raj and Secret Staircase Construction are renovating a classic detective fiction library that just got its first real-life mystery.

Tempest Raj couldn’t be happier that the family business, Secret Staircase Construction, is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Known for enchanting architectural features like sliding bookshelves and secret passageways, the company is now taking on a dream project: transforming a home into a public library that celebrates history's greatest fictional detectives.

Though the work is far from done, Gray House Library’s new owner is eager to host a murder mystery dinner and literary themed escape room. But when a rehearsal ends with an actor murdered and the body vanishes, Tempest is witness to a seemingly impossible crime. Fueled by her grandfather’s Scottish and Indian meals, Tempest and the rest of the crew must figure out who is making beloved classic mystery plots come to life in a deadly game.

Multiple award winning author Gigi Pandian masterfully weaves wit and warmth in the Secret Staircase Mysteries. Readers will delight in the surprises Secret Staircase Construction uncovers behind the next locked door.

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My Review: As someone for whom this:

...represents the apotheosis of all my life's desires, this book and series could be written solely for me. Add in Tempest's history as an illusionist of renown on the stages of Las Vegas, and I'm deeper into infatuation.

As this entry in the series is not set in the same place, or with the same precise cast, as previous ones (which I have not read), and I'm at the proper starting place, though it must be said that there are a lot of relationships that aren't formed in this book. Be prepared to infer a lot from the offhanded remarks of the cast if you're starting here, but it's really not onerous. The story Author Pandian tells us here is a very cozy one...you know, dead bodies and suchlike goins-on, but no gore and precious little that could even be considered violence in the world we live in...and a murder whose most chilling aspect is how it ties in to a bookish social community's attempts to fix up a person's home library for a destination vacation spot, plus lots of good food descriptions and a recipe or two— however can I resist?

Small things detract from perfection, like the way Tempest jumps to an absolutely wrong conclusion at one point and it's simply never dealt with, but we're not here for the locked-room puzzle. This is a relationship-driven book, one with kind, good people who really care for each other and for books and food and community. The reveal of the guilty party came as no surprise to me, experienced mystery reader that I am, mostly because I knew none of the people involved and was thus not distracted by the intended red herrings.

The presence of pet bunny Abracadabra, and a pivotal character called Mrs. Hudson, made this feel very Golden-Age mystery. While I think it's lots of fun to read, I don't see myself getting books one through three to catch up. The issue with cozies for me is I need some kind of alchemical falling-in-love moment or they become rather like TV shows. I felt here as though I could easily watch this crew doing their thing on Acorn or Britbox and love it. On the page I liked it fine, but not quite enough to get to four stars.

SOUR CHERRY, feminist retelling of the folktale Bluebeard...only with empathy

SOUR CHERRY
NATALIA THEODORIDOU
Tin House Books (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A stunning reimagining of Bluebeard—one of the most mythologized serial killers—twisted into a modern tale of toxic masculinity, a feminist sermon, and a folktale for the twenty-first century.

The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy—until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her. The ghosts can all agree on one thing, an inescapable truth about this man, this powerful lord who has loved them and led them each to ruin: If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.

Natalia Theodoridou’s haunting and unforgettable debut novel, Sour Cherry, confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men, and the complicated reasons we stay captive to the monsters we love.

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My Review: Retelling "Bluebeard," one of the most unsettling folk tales I've ever encountered, was a shoo-in to get my admiring attention for this novelist's debut effort. At about the 45% mark, the scene under the cherry tree, I found the time jumping wearing me down...no particular effect was, in my observation, intended for these shifts. They do not seem coupled to changes in emotional register, or attached to revelations of characters' understandings of themselves or each other. Instead they felt to me like ways to avoid exploring an important shift in something because after the time shift the event shifted from is dealt with in short and sharp explanation..."after that Tristan looked at his hand a lot"...without much depth. As this story explores the fear and the disappointment that must inevitably accompany truly loving another person, that matters. The ending was, as a result of this ongoing issue, a bit anticlimactic.

The plus side is that this is a retelling of a quite brutal tale that tries hard to be in the main character's corner. Something that gives kids like me nightmares is brought into the realm of reason. It's very empathetic, it's very willing to engage the readers' empathy. This makes the awfulness all the more poignant and impactful, and is the source of all my positive feelings for the book. It grapples with the deep, oceanic sadness of loving someone who is haunted by an awful past, whose emotional tides do not stop at the shores between himself and the world. It brings a lovingkindness to the seemingly cursed eternal outsider, yet doesn't play the victim card for the monster or the lover.

Craft quibbles aside, I found this story quite engrossing or I'd've simply Pearl-Ruled it. I haven't raised the thematic elements of horror to content-warning status because, frankly, if you need CWs on ancient folktales you won't consider the read for more than a split second anyway.

A debut novel that portends a career of fascinating work. I already want to read Author Theodoridou's next book.