Les Voleurs d'innocence

by Sarai Walker, Janique Jouin-de Laurens (translator)

Années 1950.
Six jeunes filles aux doux prénoms de fleurs vivent avec leurs parents dans l'opulence d'une grande bâtisse victorienne. Mais tout ceci n'a rien d'un conte de fées : c'est au contraire l'histoire d'une malédiction, car à peine mariée, l'aînée, Aster, meurt mystérieusement, bientôt suivie par sa soeur Rosalind. Belinda, la mère à l'esprit torturé, hantée par les fantômes, semblait pourtant avoir prédit leur funeste destin, mais personne ne se fie à ce qui sort de son cerveau embrumé. Sauf peut-être Iris, la cadette, qui est, elle, bien décidée à survivre.

Prix des lecteurs 2024.

« Sarai Walker ripoline le roman gothique aux couleurs de la sororité actuelle. » - Elle
« Le suspense monte au fil des pages (...). Un roman au message clairement féministe, qui emporte le lecteur dans une ambiance sombre et envoûtante. » - La Voix du Nord

Genres: Historical Fiction, Horror, Fiction, Gothic, Mystery, Historical, Feminism

535 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 17, 2022

About the author

Sarai Walker is the author of the novel THE CHERRY ROBBERS, which will be published by Harper Books on May 17, 2022. Her first novel, DIETLAND, has been published in more than a dozen countries and was adapted as a television series for AMC. She has lectured on feminism and body image internationally, and has spoken about these topics widely in the media. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and elsewhere, and she worked as a writer and editor on an updated version of Our Bodies, Ourselves. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College and a PhD in English from the University of London.

Reviews

[Rosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a Nutshell: Great premise, could have had better execution, disappointing ending, slow! Unlike what many reviews tell you, this isn’t a Gothic horror. More like a historical atmospheric suspense.

Story:

New Mexico, 2017. Sylvia Wren is a well-known but reclusive artist. She stays on the outskirts with her partner Lola. But when a persistent journalist hints at digging into her family roots, Sylvia knows that she can’t hide under the assumed identity anymore.
Flashback to Connecticut, 1950s: Iris Chapel is one of the six Chapel sisters. With the Chapel name being known for their firearms fortune, Iris’s mother Belinda is convinced that their house is haunted and cursed by the spirits of those killed by Chapel guns. The six girls are fed up of living with a weird mother and an absentee father and they see marriage as their only means of escape. However, not long after the first sister is married, tragedy strikes, and keep striking with devastating consequences.
Why and when did Iris Chapel become Sylvia Wren? You need to read and find out.
The book comes in the first person perspective of Iris/Sylvia.

What genre it is: Atmospheric, historical, drama, minor traces of suspense and magical realism.
What genre it is NOT: Horror, Gothic, murder mystery, thriller, paranormal.


❌: It is a slow read. (which is not a good thing for a 430+ page book.)
✔: it still kept me hooked as the suspense made me go faster and keep flipping the pages.

❌: Lots of depressing stuff. Too many deaths.
✔: The foreshadowing helps you be prepared for the deaths.
❌: Too much of foreshadowing can also spoil the suspense.

✔: Loved the complicated relationship between the six siblings. Never goody-goody. Very realistic. All six named after flowers and have personalities almost matching their flower-names.
❌: When you like the characters, you do feel sorry for what happened to them. And what happened to them isn’t good. 😩

✔: There are some really spooky scenes. Some elements of magical realism too.
❌: All the spookiness is in the background. Nothing to make you get nightmares. The fantastical elements are underutilised.

✔: Great themes – Feminism, LGBTQ, gender discrimination, patriarchal dominance.
❌: I didn’t like the portrayal of one of the LGBTQ characters; it felt stereotypical.

✔: Great cover, representing the book perfectly. Nice title too if you understand the meaning and relevance of it. Hint: It has nothing to do with the fruit.
❌: You won’t understand the relevance of the title even after you read the author’s note, which only reveals the poem the phrase is borrowed from. I can take a stab at interpreting the title, but it will be a huge spoiler.

✔: It’s a women-dominated show all the way.
❌: Not a single good/memorable male character.

✔: Excellent start and a gripping storyline, almost till the end. Though you know what’s going to come, you still want to read it.
❌: The ending is so disappointing. No explanations provided at all. You just have to accept what happened without knowing why. Not fair!

I have a few more ✔s and ❌s but I want to keep this review spoiler-free. So this is all you get!


All in all, I enjoyed the book quite a lot. Had the ending satisfied me, this would have easily reached, maybe even crossed the 4 star mark. But the final chapters were more like an anti-climax than a climax to the story. I wanted a lot more! Still, it is a great atmospheric read, as long as you don’t mind the slow or depressing storyline and the excessive foreshadowing.

3.75 stars. (I was confused between 3.5 and 3.75, but as both ratings round up to 4 on my scale, I am going with the higher rating as I didn’t feel like keeping it aside.)

My thanks to Mariner Books and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Cherry Robbers”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.




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[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let me tell you about one of my favorite books of 2022: “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 page-turner about the legacy of male power and the cost of female freedom.”

Did you remember when you were reading a book, especially one you loved? I will always remember I was reading The Cherry Robbers in the days and weeks before and after my dad passed away. It was just the type of book I needed to read because I was fully immersed and invested, and the flawless writing and well-developed characters were always present in my mind. I could go a week without picking it up and fall right back into it, which brought immense comfort.

The story of five affluent, but sheltered, sisters living in a “wedding cake” house amid a backdrop of gothic atmosphere, one by one each sister dies after she is married. It’s brilliant, twisty, perfectly paced, thought-provoking, and wowee, did it ever have me turning the pages. I’ll be forever grateful to Sarai Walker for this story that brought me comfort, distraction, and grounding, during a time when I’ve felt lost. Everyone needs to be talking about this one. Everyone needs to read it. I LOVED IT.

I received a gifted copy.

Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader

[Val (pagespoursandpups) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. I'm not sure I was prepared for this book. I went into the book mostly blind, and not knowing what awaited me. I was in for a pleasant surprise! A gothic fiction is outside of my normal genre, but man.... I was in it 100 percent for this one!

A story about a firearms dynasty and the family that ultimately paid the price for its destruction. Six girls, sisters with a Father who was always at work and a Mother who never wanted to be married or a mother. Luckily they had each other, and they made the most of it. Paired off by age in groups of 2, the girls lived a privileged life that was very different from others of that time. They kept to themselves as their parents wanted no part of society. Their mother, Belinda, had battled her demons since her mother died during childbirth. As no one would question, each girl dreamed of the day she would be able to live her own life, away from their mad mother and a world with no outside social interaction.

Once the girls find love, a kind of curse is unveiled. Belinda has foreseen "that bad things will happen". As the story unfolded, I was utterly captivated. What, what, what in the heck was going to happen next? Was this curse real? When would it stop? Was anyone immune? Each of the daughters were well developed. Each had her own strengths and weaknesses and I felt a tug towards each one. The story of their ultimate demise is told through the voice of Iris, the fifth daughter, who is the only one to avoid the curse and who goes on to life outside of the family home. She left the world of Iris behind and became Sylvia Wren. A successful and well-renowned artist at the age of 80, she receives a letter informing her that her hidden identity has been discovered. She relives the tragedies, the grief, and memories of the life she thought she left behind.

The story visits themes of family, feminism, sexuality, grief and expectations. Although many questions go unanswered, I was left with a feeling of satisfaction. The truth will never truly be known. I was surprised at how vested I was in this story. I finished this book in two days, not being able to put it down for long. That is the mark of a great author - these characters and this story had me wanting more at every chapter.

An odd but strangely compelling read. My heart was racing as I read on. I definitely recommend this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books for this arc to read and review.

[Dea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow, and painful, and tedious, and drags on and on and on without really saying anything, and I don’t know what the point was, and at one point one of the characters says “I don’t really know what the story is” and I don’t think the author does either (I definitely don’t).

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully spooky and haunting as a Gothic novel should be.

The author did a great job relaying a murderous pattern without it getting monotonous.

Not sure that I understood the moral of the story. Is it that we shouldn't have sex with men? That dicks will lead to death? If anyone who read the book could clarify I would appreciate it.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so excited at the idea of a gothic by Sarai Walker, who wrote the weird and wonderful novel DIETLAND. But this ended up being just fine, which was a real disappointment given how much I was hoping for. It's got several gothic elements--big old unusual house, possibly ghosts, the shadow of death hanging over everything, a group of sisters practically cloistered--but it never really felt haunted. It just does exactly what it says it's going to do, which I guess I shouldn't fault it for and yet I am doing it anyway.

Bookended as a flashback by artist Sylvia in her 80's, we are introduced to the life she left behind as one of the Chapel girls, six daughters born into a family who made their fortune in firearm manufacturing. In this world Chapel is as well known a name as Colt or Winchester. The six sisters are close to each other and almost seem separate from the world at large, in their big Victorian house. And we know right off what is going to happen thanks to a rhyme the locals invent: the Chapel sisters, first they get married and then they get buried. And, indeed, we then proceed to watch 5 of the 6 sisters (minus our narrator, of course) die.

The buildup to the first death, of oldest sister Aster, is slowly built up and works quite well. As does the second, of second sister Rosalind, where no one believes the same thing would ever happen again. But after those two it stalls. Because you wonder, how can we keep repeating this? Are we just going to keep doing this same thing. And with some variations, yes we are. And why? Well, that's not really clear.

This is where it lost me. There is so much that Walker piles on these sisters--a legacy of ancestral women who all died in childbirth, their own mother who was virtually forced into marriage and who never recovered from the trauma of it, their father's wealth made from guns and death, patriarchy and how marriage is women's only option while also robbing them of identity--that it feels rather muddled. And it's never clear why any of this happens, and that it happens so many times (including, to my chagrin, to one sister who's a lesbian and never even gets married!) I just couldn't figure out what the purpose was beyond saying that women in 1950 didn't have it so good. Which, I mean, yes. I needed it to take me somewhere, I needed it to open something up, and instead it felt like many things I'd read before.

I kept reading, waiting for it to turn, waiting for it to shift into something more, but it never did. To be fair, I never cared much for The Virgin Suicides, which this definitely reminded me of, though it also lacked the tone and perspective that at least made that one noteworthy if not enjoyable for me.

[Sarai Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new novel, The Cherry Robbers, is published today! It's available in hardback, e-book, and as an audiobook narrated by January LaVoy.

[Trisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calling out all the fans of Shirley Jackson, this book will quench your thirst for a creepy gothic thriller with an emphasis on loneliness and what grief can do to us, similar to Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Walker's writing is seductive and would claw at your inner calmness, creating tension inside you, not quite different from what the protagonist Sylvia Wren feels. I was on the edge through most of the book, fighting Sylvia's demons and trying to find answers to questions that are eventually left unanswered, or better said, left to the reader's interpretation. Sylvia Wren, a popular feminist artist, has a dark secret- she is not who she claims to be and has managed to keep her tragic past buried until she is confronted by a sneaky journalist who knows her real identity and wants to brings that out to the public.

This book felt like an exploration of the female mind and sexuality - a journey through the wild terrains of societal norms and the perception of the fairer sex in the 1950s. Walker manages to instil horror in her readers - the horror of not being loved, the edginess that comes with knowing that you'd never be understood and will forever be confined in the land of the unloved & broken.💔

There are ghosts in this book but it's onto the readers to decide whether these ghosts are real or figments of imagination created by grief, anxiety and years of suppression. I'm taking my time to absorb the story and make my deductions, this is not going to be easy!

Thank you to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for this eARC! The Cherry Robbers is due to publish on 1st February, 2022.

4.5/5 🌟(rounded up).

TW: Death, Hallucinations, Emotional abuse, Absent parents, Accident, Drowning, Self harm, War references.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this dread-filled and dreamlike historical fiction fairy tale, stuffed with vivid character sketches and gorgeous evocations of nature and girlhood and Gothic-tinged spaces in midcentury New York.

[Emily Coffee and Commentary · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4n0TxfLZ...

A southern gothic fairytale of madness and secrets. Atmospheric and dark, winding along a series of twists and turns, The Cherry Robbers offers a glimpse into the complicated strength of sisterhood, and the many forms that both freedom and oppression take. Exploring sexuality, feminism, and grief against the backdrop of a society that thrives on image and fortune this novels suspense aligns with the building tensions that women face as they attempt to break free from expectation and live a life that was not previously drawn out. A fascinating historical drama that is filled with loss and the courage it takes to fulfill destiny on one’s own terms.

[Elaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The Cherry Robbers.

I haven't read the authors previous novel so I went into this with an open mind.

I'm intrigued by novels featuring sibling relationships so I was pretty excited to dive into this, but other than the great writing, I was less than wowed by the narrative.

The premise had promise but there is nothing Gothic-y or spooky about the story.

When people use the word 'gothic' I don't think they really know what it means, to paraphrase what the great Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride says to Vizzini every time he says 'inconceivable.'

The narrative consists of personal journals written by Sylvia Wren, an elusive and famous artist who was one of the famous Chapel sisters.

She details the loss of her five sisters to an unnamed illness, a tragedy that shattered her family and herself, which led to her new identity and life as an artist.

The narrative is bogged down with filler and superfluous details of weddings, and dresses, while the not so subtle themes of mental illness, child neglect, and the expectations of a patriarchal society hovers within each line.

The terrible illness that befalls the sisters is never named but it's not hard to figure out what the author is trying to say; that women are ignored and disregarded, nothing more but vessels to bear children and run the household.

I wished I liked the Chapel sisters more; I didn't dislike them but I didn't connect with any of them, perhaps Sylvia, but as a character she always felt at a remove from the reader, but perhaps that's the point.

As the lone survivor of her troubled family, she no longer considers herself a Chapel, and is relating the events of her previous life as if she was a spectator.

Foreboding and foreshadowing lives on practically every page, and Sylvia already tells the reader what will happen to her sisters so there's no suspense, no drama; she's just relating the events that will lead to each loss.

It took me a long time to finish this because the pacing was so slow.

I think some readers would enjoy this, especially if they enjoy long expositions and background information.

[M. G. A. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Audio. I absolutely adored the authors previous book dietland and have read it multiple times and recommended it to everyone I know.

I purchased this audio the day it came out and was ready for another female centric book. This was a bizarre anti-man scribe that gave women no power, and spoiler alert, had several of the protagonists die because they had sex.

Iris is terrified of men. There is never an explanation for why the women die after having sex. It never resolves the tropes of “people don’t believe women.”

I’m not sure what the point of this book was. The women dismiss their mother, they don’t respect their father. It’s some weird conflagration of social mores in the 1950s with an eye from the 2020s.

Again, I love a female centric us against the world book. This was not it. So disappointed.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

If the premise of Sarai Walker’s sophomore novel sounds a bit Virgin Suicides – a cursed family with six sheltered daughters doomed to die in succession – the end result is, thankfully (a hater writes), more like a mash-up of A Reunion of Ghosts, Three-Martini Lunch, and The Psychology of Time Travel sans sci-fi: a warm, highly detailed historical drama that draws the reader completely into its world. Looking at the blurb now I recall that what drew me to it, aside from Walker’s name, was the fact that the main character is an artist, and the idea of the story exploring how she reinvents herself after a tumultuous and tragic childhood. In fact, this figures very little. For most of the book we are firmly among the Chapel family in 1950s New England. This was a milieu I wasn’t sure I was interested in... until I found myself hundreds of pages deep and thoroughly engaged. Ultimately, I’m thankful I misunderstood what it was about; I probably wouldn’t have read it otherwise, and I’m very glad I did.

I received an advance review copy of The Cherry Robbers from the publisher through Edelweiss.

TinyLetter | Linktree

[Apoorva · Rating 4 out of 5]

WOAH! WOAH! That was my response nearly throughout the book. Yes, with all the twists, turns & brutal incidents said in the fiction, I simply couldn't control my reactions after reading it & being shocked. I headed blindly into this tale after being captivated by the cover & the book's title. Furthermore, glancing at the pages, I felt I would DNF the book midway; in fact, I was really consuming page after page swiftly. I have never read gothic novels & I, for sure, am taking up on this genre more in 2022.

I would like to suggest this book to all gothic thriller lovers. You won't be dissatisfied by Sarai's female-centric narrative describing the vast sentiments of loneliness & despair. It even releases the raw emotions inside you, causing you to sense the uneasiness felt by the protagonist. The writer made sure that I was consistently on my toes, guessing what was proceeding & not stopping one bit.

I desire to thank NetGalley, the publisher & author, for providing me with an e-ARC of this book. I am leaving my review willingly.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I don't really know how to rate this! I loved the beginning and the premise of this story. It went downhill and was quite a slog for the last third of the book. It could've been edited down quite a bit.

[Royce · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book of over 400 pages, nothing is ever resolved. It is described as a Gothic tale. Imho, the only Gothic elements in this story is the description of the home and possibly, the mention of ghosts. The writing is decent, however, the story is BORING. Men=bad, marry a man=die, lesbian flees the scene, and LIVES. I felt as though I was reading a Hallmark movie. I know this sounds harsh, especially since I have never watched a Hallmark movie, but the summary of the book tells you everything you will need to know before and after reading it. I’m off to reread Shirley Jackson…..

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Just wow. I absolutely LOVED this novel! I'm a huge fan of Sarai Walker's writing. Her debut, Dietland was my favorite novel of 2015, and I've been eagerly awaiting her sophomore effort ever since. She did not disappoint. I love how the concept of feminism is weaved throughout this novel, just like "Dietland" - but it's completely different in plot and structure. "The Cherry Robbers" is an original, quirky, heartbreaking, and captivating novel from start to finish. I loved Sylvia/Iris as the protagonist. She was the perfect person to tell the tragic deaths of her 5 sisters (don't worry, that's not a spoiler). Part gothic ghost story, part feminist love letter. I loved the symbolism. The Chapel sisters stole/devoured/broke my heart. I loved everything about it. I was never bored, and I'm a VERY picky reader. All the stars! I hope this book becomes an instant bestseller when it is released in the spring. AN ABSOLUTE MASTERPIECE.

Thank you, Netgalley and Mariner Books for the digital ARC.

[Mariana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creo que tengo una debilidad por las historias sobre hermanas. Más que un libro de terror, lo sentí como un misterio con una atmósfera gótica. La historia está levemente basada en Sarah Winchester, la heredera de la fortuna de los rifles Winchester famosa por su casa excéntrica y por su fe en el espiritismo. Sarai Walker imagina qué hubiera pasado si la señora Winchester (Belinda Chapel en la novela) hubiera tenido 5 hijas herederas de un linaje maldito. La historia está narrada desde la perspectiva de Iris, quién nos cuenta las misteriosas circunstancias que rodean las muertes de sus hermanas. ¿Puede esta maldición haber empezado con su abuela? O quizá la infelicidad de su madre ha infectado a todas sus descendientes. Me gustó mucho, escuché el audiolibro pero seguro lo consigo en físico porque algún día lo volveré a leer.

[Erin Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

GET THIS BOOK ON YOUR TBR! I will be thinking about the Chapel sisters for a very, very long time to come! I adored this!

[Adrienne Blaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I had to describe this book in three words, they would be: on the nose. I wanted to shout “a rose is a rose is a rose!” But in this book each primary female character is given a floral name and those petals do a lot of heavy lifting. There’s so much I wanted to love about this book including the descriptions of flowers, perfumes and 1950s fashions, but I felt like I was constantly being hit over the head with symbolism and foreshadowing. The book is framed as sort of a retrospective journal entry by an artist reflecting on her haunted childhood, however the writing does little to acknowledge the fallibility of memory. This seems like a missed opportunity to me since the story revolves around women being seen as unreliable narrators of their own experiences.

I had high hopes because of the inspiration Sarai Walker said she loosely drew from Sarah Winchester, the widow to the Winchester rifle fortune. I grew up near the so-called Winchester Mystery House that Mrs. Winchester built and have visited it multiple times. In her acknowledgements, Walker says she drew from historian Mary Jo Ignoffo’s book Captive of the Labyrinth, which challenges the stories that frame Mrs. Winchester as a crazy woman haunted by the spirits of those killed by Winchester rifles. I was disappointed that The Cherry Robbers was driven so much by that legend instead or Mrs. Winchester’s interest in architecture.

The first half of the book introduces characters and sets the scene for something terrible to happen and by the time it happens, I was too exhausted from all the heavy handed foreshadowing to care. The second half of the book was far more interesting than the first, but it was still quite slow and every bit of metaphor was spelled out for the reader in a way that felt redundant and pulled me out of the story. There are some good feminist and lesbian themes in this book, but it just wasn’t enough to make me want to recommend this book to anyone.

I received an advance digital copy of this book from NetGalley and Mariner Books in exchange for an honest review.

[Destiny · Rating 5 out of 5]

If Shirley Jackson and Taylor Jenkins Reid had a baby, it would be THIS BOOK!!

OH MY GOODNESS!

The synopsis does this book absolutely no justice, though, so I suggest going into it relatively blind and letting yourself be immersed in the story and carried along with the plot. The characters, although plentiful, are all very well-developed and I honestly could relate to each person, making the novel so much better.

This story has a decidedly Gothic (here's the Shirley Jackson) feel to it despite being pretty much contemporary, but it's done in a way that you feel as though you are right there living the action with the characters. Add in a little bit of Taylor Jenkins Reid and her delightful prose regarding feminism and sexuality (think Evelyn Hugo), and you're left with a gem of a book.

I couldn't read this fast enough and even though it was over 400 pages long, I devoured it in less than 24 hours! I would give this book all the stars, if I could! Absolutely breathtakingly brilliant!

[CharlesJoli · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG.

Il fait six cent pages et je l'ai dévoré en 24h, devenant de plus en plus incapable de le lâcher au fur et à mesure que j'avançais dans ma lecture. Ce rythme morbide qui s'accélère jusqu'à l'inéluctable m'a donné la nausée et quelques bouffées d'angoisse, mais je ne pouvais pas faire autrement que de me laisser entraîner. Rarement on m'a raconté une histoire avec autant de talent, je suis époustouflée. J'aimerais conseiller à tout le monde de le lire, et j'ai bien conscience qu'un récit qui promet d'être aussi tragique peut rebuter. Il faut donc mentionner la beauté de son épilogue, qui élève le récit à un niveau de réflexion inattendu. Soudain, l'intériorité de la narratrice nous apparaît comme un univers entier. C'est profondément émouvant, et féministe à sa manière. Mon seul regret vient du titre qui s'arrête, il me semble, sur ce qui compte au fond le moins dans le roman.

[Jayne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Compelling premise, poor execution.

The author completely lost me when she started talking about "headless brides".

NOT FOR ME.

The audiobook was read by January LaVoy, one of my very, very favorite narrators. Even January LaVoy could not save this book.

1.5 stars rounded up.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and melancholy

Oooof this book tore me up.

If you enjoy Gothic literature with feminist critique, this is the one.

I marked it as horror, but it's not horror in the jump-scare sense, but in the ways that upper white womanhood was a hellshow in the 1950s if you didn't fit in with societal (or husband's) expectations. It's a critique and an homage to Gothic literature, and to the fate women of a certain societal standing were expected to step into willingly.

Add art, flowers, a creepy Victorian house, grief and trauma, shades of Dickinson and Tennyson and Sarah Winchester, commentary on the gun manufacturing industry, and a gripping story about mothers and daughters and motherless daughters and headless brides with a dash of weirdness, and you get this book.

The ending was...pretty abrupt, but it worked. I don't normally like diary-type books or past-present storylines, but I was enthralled by how this one was set up, mostly because there wasn't a lot of back and forth. Once we were in Iris Chapel's life, we were in in, for good or bad, until Iris Chapel was no more and only Sylvia Wren remains.

Oh, and it's queer. It sidesteps around *some* of the issues I thought the book was going to have (chiefly, naming all men bad) and gives the briefest of glances of relationships for queer women in the 1950s...and the lesbian pulp literature that floated around. I did want more on Lola, but I can see why Walker chose to have her included as she was, even if it was unsatisfying for me. The story was not about Lola and Sylvia, but Iris and her sisters, and her mother, and all of the mothers who came before them.

I could talk more, particularly about the role of men in this book, but frankly they were not the interesting part and were only vehicles of destruction (although again, interesting commentary on men and courtship and men and marriage). Daddy Chapel was a blandly absent character focused more on work and respectability than his children (until it was too late) (although there were undertones of something...darker??? Kinda???), and the men the sisters fall for (*ahem* grasp at as a lifeline to escape their dysfunctional family) were again, plot devices meant to shepherd the girls off to their fates. Once their part was done, they vanished into their own fresh starts (for the most part).

I received this ARC from the publisher for an honest review

[Lormac · Rating 1 out of 5]

You know, I love to read, but I never think I have what it takes to write a book. I can't seem to think of an interesting, coherent plot, or characters who wouldn't be cliches.
And then I read a book like "The Cherry Robbers" and I think, "hold up, if someone gave this author money to write a book like this, then maybe I can....."

SPOILERS AHEAD - -
Sylvia Wren is a lesbian artist living in New Mexico who paints pictures of flowers which look like women's genitalia. (Hmmm, guess the author did not have to think that up...) But really, Sylvia assumed that name when she abandoned her former life as Iris Chapel. Iris Chapel was the fifth of six sisters born to a rifle manufacturer. Iris's mother, Belinda, was haunted by... well, there's some confusion in the plotline about that - is it the victims of her husband's guns, or is it that she is a person who can see "beyond the veil" that separates this life from the next because she heard her mother's death screams as she was giving birth to Belinda? The reader is left to their own musings since both possibilities (along with a few other random possibilities) are presented. Iris's sisters die, one after the other, after their "de-flowering" (oh, by the way, all the sisters have names of flowers .....sigh.....) when, the morning after the event, they lose their minds, and break windows, and cut themselves, and faint on the floor, but it is never clear why this is happening - or why it happens to the one other sister (not Iris), who is also a lesbian, because she loses her mind and decides to swim in February in the Long Island Sound. Is the author trying to say something about the loss of a woman's self when she marries? (No, because at least one of the hetero sisters is not married when she loses her virginity, so....) And Iris is outraged when people suggest that women are prone to hysteria, but isn't that exactly what her sisters seemed to be in the throes of when they died? Sigh... There is more nonsense about Belinda smelling roses whenever death is near, but then why would she name her daughters after flowers, one even after a rose? Argh.

Leaving the plot and characterizations aside, this book drags on forever. The reader is faced with unnecessary detail after unnecessary detail, and the characters engage in pointless activities, and too much time is spent on some topics (the preparations for the first sister's wedding must take up at least one-quarter of the book) and then other are brushed over -exactly what happened to the last sister, I never could figure out.

Anyway, usually a bad book is a bad book and the excuse to write a good review puzzling out what went wrong, but this book was such a mess, I really think I may be able to write a book.....well, at least a book as bad as this one...

[Collette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ll admit that in reading the first 100 pages or so of The Cherry Robbers, my thoughts were leaning toward “too absurd” or “too unlikely”. However, once I settled into the space this story occupies as a gothic novel, I began to appreciate its quirks and improbabilities. There are ghosts, curses, cloistered women, visions, symbols, inexplicable events and overwrought emotion, all wrapped up in an atmosphere of mystery and suspense. I also appreciated the feminist thread, a guilded strand of light, that held the narrative together.

The beginning and end parts of the book are framed with the life of Sylvia Wren, telling the story of her reinvented life as a famous painter who lives with her partner, Lola, in New Mexico. Older now, she starts to receive persistent letters from a journalist who has uncovered her past, as Iris Chapel, one of six daughters from a prominent gun family in Connecticut. With her partner on a business trip across the world, Sylvia is prompted to record her childhood and the accounts of the tragedies that plagued the family, specifically the women. This curse starts with her great grandmother, grabs hold of her mother, Belinda, in a unique way, and ends only by Iris escaping fate and reinventing herself as another person. These volumes that depict the life of Iris Chapel are the middle section of the book.

The writing, especially of her childhood in 1950s Connecticut is descriptive and inviting. Each of the sisters is named after a flower, beginning with Aster the oldest and ending with Hazel, called “Zellie.” The house is ironically called the “wedding cake” as that’s what the architecture resembles, and marriage or sexual relationships is where the trouble starts for the Chapel women. The author attributes the title to D.H. Lawrence’s poem of the same name, but serves as an double entendre referring to the men who steal the sisters’ innocence. Sexual identity, traditional gender roles, society’s view of women and mental health are all thematic players in this expansive story. The pacing was uneven, as the narrative hung out in insignificant space too long in some places and seemed collapsed or lacking in details in important parts. This may have been part of the claustrophobia created in the genre of gothic historical fiction.

Overall, I am glad I stuck with this book, and felt rewarded at its conclusion. Walker’s writing talent is evident from the beginning and although I haven’t read Dietland and hear it is very different from this novel, I look forward to reading another one of Walker’s commanding storylines.

[Ends of the Word · Rating 4 out of 5]

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/20...

[Samantha Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Virgin Suicides meets Winchester Mystery Mansion, but add a dash of Georgia Okeefe and a little Yellow Wallpaper. That’s the recipe for this book, of which all ingredients are separately more fascinating than the novel itself. I wish I loved this one more, but it just wasn’t for me. It was repetitive and took far too long to reach resolution, to meet the refrain of “life isn’t worth living without love.” However, I enjoyed that the heteronormative relationships were violently doomed in a way that most LGBTQIA relationships often (terrifyingly, sadly) are—the danger to the Chapel women are men, just men. Being a lesbian saves Iris’ life. And for that alone, this book gets a solid three stars.

[Floflyy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Malgré une fin qui tirait un peu en longueur, j'ai contre toute attente adoré ce roman. Bien plus un roman à ambiance qu'un thriller ou autre genre, la plume de Sarai Walker est captivante.

Elle arrive sur 600 pages a nous raconter une histoire dont on connaît déjà l'issue. Avec un talent de conteuse, elle nous expose la vie des 6 sœurs Chapel. Et même si l'on connaît la fin, on est touché. On se plaît à y croire, à espérer, tout en tournant les pages avec une curiosité morbide.

[Labonbon · Rating 1 out of 5]

There's a line in this book where the lead character says something
Ike “I don’t know what the story is”, and I agreed with her.