The Cherry Robbers

 

I received a copy of this release from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: The Cherry Robbers

Author: Sarai Walker 

Publisher: Harper

Release Date: 5.17.22

Publisher’s Summary 

New Mexico, 2017: Sylvia Wren is one of the most important American artists of the past century. Known as a recluse, she avoids all public appearances. There’s a reason: she’s living under an assumed identity, having outrun a tragic past. But when a hungry journalist starts chasing her story, she’s confronted with whom she once was: Iris Chapel.

Connecticut, 1950: Iris Chapel is the second youngest of six sisters, all heiresses to a firearms fortune. They’ve grown up cloistered in a palatial Victorian house, mostly neglected by their distant father and troubled mother, who believes that their house is haunted by the victims of Chapel weapons. The girls long to escape, and for most of them, the only way out is marriage. But not long after the first Chapel sister walks down the aisle, she dies of mysterious causes, a tragedy that repeats with the second, leaving the rest to navigate the wreckage, to heart-wrenching consequences. 

Ultimately, Iris flees the devastation of her family, and so begins the story of Sylvia Wren. But can she outrun the family curse forever?

My Review

“Cherry Robbers” by D. H. Lawrence 

Under the long dark boughs, like jewels red 

In the hair of an Eastern girl 

Hang strings of crimson cherries, as if had bled 

Blood-drops beneath each curl. 

Under the glistening cherries, with folded wings 

Three dead birds lie: 

Pale-breasted throstles and a blackbird, robberlings 

Stained with red dye. 

Against the haystack a girl stands laughing at me, 

Cherries hung round her ears. 

Offers me her scarlet fruit: I will see 

If she has any tears.

With a title borrowed from such an iconic poem, one can quickly deduce that there will be a connection between the deaths of the Chapel sisters and sex. Told from Iris, the second youngest sister's, point of view, The Cherry Robbers is a swirl of mental health struggles and generational trauma wrapped up in a Gothic ghost story. Her mother believes their house is haunted by the souls of those who have been killed by Chapel firearms. 

"Our house was paid for by death, which couldn’t be denied. My father had inherited the house from his father, whose own father had built it in the 1870s with the profits he’d made from the Civil War. That’s how our family made money, after all: war, murder, suicide, animal slaughter."

Both Chapel parents avoid their children, their father is always at work, and their mother stays in her own room, only to occasionally venture out to the gardens. The girls entertain themselves and many of the scenes are reminiscent of the beginning of The Virgin Suicides. 

"It was our second week of spring break, still unseasonably sunny and warm, but we mostly moped around the house, lying on the sofas in the sitting room half-heartedly reading magazines or books."

After the deaths of the two oldest sisters immediately following their marriages (I'm giving nothing away here, it's in the summary) the remaining sisters begin to spiral into grief while trying to figure out how to outrun their destinies. 

If you liked The Virgin Suicides; Girl, Interrupted/TheBell Jar; or Mona Lisa Smile, you will probably like this novel. There is also a heavy theme of art (creation, analysis, and evolution) throughout the story with Iris Chapel/Sylvia Wren's art being similar to Georgia O'Keefe.