All at once a slow, sensual burn of a gothic novel and a subtle upending of gothic tropes. The story features a doomed family of six sisters all named for flowers, living like colorfully dressed prisoners in a house that is called the "wedding cake," who one by one go to their mysterious fates with only one sister remaining to tell the tale. As the narrator is an artist, the book is filled with lush, evocative images. It is mostly left to the reader to make of this what we will, but men certainly do not come off well in this novel. I highly enjoyed it. ( )

Compelling plot, binged it since I really wanted to find out what happened to the protag's sisters. Enjoyed the imagery. Punched me hard in the feeling since my own mom had some similar problems as the protag's. ( )

The Cherry Robbers is the story of Sylvia Wren, a world-famous artist. Or maybe it’s the story of Iris Chapel, the fifth of the six Chapel sisters, heiresses and all doomed from birth. The two tales, set on different timelines, entwine in the diaries Sylvia decides to write, unhearting secrets that have been kept under wraps for decades.

[Keep reading @ Bookshelves & Teacups] ( )

I haven’t read Sarai Walker’s first novel Dietland, nor watched the series based on it, but I know it has been described as “genre bending” and as “part-Fight Club, part feminist manifesto”. The Cherry Robbers shows the same enthusiasm for upending genre expectations to convey a strong feminist message. The novel is, in fact, a send-up of the Gothic novel which incorporates tropes of the genre even while comically subverting them.

The narrator and protagonist in The Cherry Robbers is eighty-year-old lesbian painter Sylvia Wren. After a career spent in and inspired by New Mexico and its landscape, Sylvia is a respected, well-known – and well-off – figure, even though she lives like a recluse and avoids publicity like a plague. And for good reason too. Sylvia has a well-kept secret. She is actually Iris Chapel, the second youngest of six daughters of an arms magnate, brought up in a palatial mansion in Connecticut. When a journalist threatens to reveal this early chapter in her life, Sylvia/Iris decides to face her past and write down her memories of childhood and youth.

Albeit largely left to their own devices by their distant father and their eccentric mother (prey to visions of the victims of weapons manufactured by the Chapel factories), the six sisters lead a privileged life in each other’s company. When the eldest daughter becomes engaged to a dashing young man, her mother entreats her to cancel the wedding, prophesying tragedy. Hardly anyone believes the mother’s rants, but tragedy does strike, in the most melodramatic of ways, after the wedding night. History keeps repeating itself for the other sisters, a sure sign that not only is the Chapel mansion haunted, but the family itself also seems struck by a curse. Will Iris manage to outrun it?

The Cherry Robbers reads like a version of The Virgin Suicides in which the voyeuristic male gaze of that novel’s rather morbid narrator is substituted with the voice of a feisty, self-deprecating, feminist heroine. Walker’s novel is best approached as a deliberately OTT creation, painted in garish colours, with little attempt at nuance. The central metaphor of the novel is hardly subtle. All the male suitors are cartoonish, cardboard figures. So are, up to a point, the Chapel sisters who readily sacrifice themselves to them. Yet, the novel is still successful in its combination of comedy and horror, providing a refreshing take on well-worn Gothic tropes.

3.5*

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-cherry-robbers-by-sarai-walker.ht... ( )

The Cherry Robbers definitely had an interesting premise, and touted as a Gothic mystery, it had certainly piqued my interest. It didn't take long to realize this wasn't Gothic in the slightest and execution-wise, was a bit of a mess. Personally, I don't mind a slow burn novel as long as the suspense is there, but when the so-called foreshadowing takes away from the suspense, you've lost me. This novel tries hard to be mysterious, but for me, it simply didn't work.

The novel focuses on the complicated relationship between the six sisters, something I did like. Having grown up with a couple of sisters myself, I could relate to their issues, dreams, and, desires, especially living in such a cloistered household with a father who has such rigid rules of decorum and a mother who is dealing with mental health issues. I could understand their need for escape, and I did feel empathy for them as they realized their only way to escape would be through marriage rather than through education and learning. I loved how they were named after flowers, a double-entendre, considering flowers wilt and die if not nurtured and watered, which seems to be very symbolic in this situation. I'm not going to bore you with symbolism here, but I did enjoy the use of language conventions the author used to describe the sisters. However, I don't think the author went far enough as I still felt they were one-dimensional, to a point, and would have loved to learn more about what they really felt. When the girls started dying, I definitely wasn't as horrified as I should have been because of this lack of deeper empathy. I also felt the LGBTQ representation was pretty stereotypical, although I did like the discussions around feminism, freedom, women's rights, gender discrimination, patriarchy, etc... that existed in the 1950s as well as mental health issues, It's too bad the author felt the need to include this whole 'ghost' thing to make the book sound more Gothic which is a huge misrepresentation of what is actually going on.

I didn't really find the book spooky at all, but then I am a voracious horror book reader so my POV might be a little skewed in this regard. I did find some of the scenes interesting, but I wasn't convinced by any of them as they just didn't make sense within the book at all. So, what we've got here are scenes of magical realism thrown into this book where you have to just kind of suspend your belief and accept that these women just died. Nope, not going to happen. Yes, there are deeper themes within the deaths, like neglect and despair plus the shunting of women into background roles, but you are supposed to accept the illnesses represent these things and come through the women in this way? I get that marriage was the evil in this story as well as the lack of opportunities for women, but I'm not sure I like the way the message was delivered. Unfortunately, the author bogs down the reader with a lot of filler, and while I normally wouldn't mind it if it built up the suspense, the foreshadowing doesn't help built it up because the reader is already given all the pertinent details which takes away from the suspense and thrill.

Verdict
The Cherry Robbers is one of those books that was way too slow for me, whereby all the information and foreshadowing are given to the reader which destroys the suspense and the chill of a novel such as this. When everything is spelled out for you, including the foreboding elements, it draws you out of the story and makes it challenging to return as you are not invested in the characters nor the action. Unfortunately, there was nothing ghostly or Gothic about this book. I am glad to see there were a lot of people who enjoyed this book, but I was not one of them. ( )