The Pear Field by Nana Ekvtimishvili

The pear field by Nana Ekvtimishvili

Georgian fiction

Original title – მსხლების მინდორი

Translator – Elizabeth Heighway

Source – review copy

I had this sent earlier but had tried a couple of times to start it and just wasn’t getting into it. But as the last few weeks, I am now sitting and reading for a couple of hours solid rather than ten to fifteen mins a few times a day. I did what Peirene has always said about their books and that they are like sitting and watching a two-hour film. This is the debut novel from the Georgian writer Nana Ekvtimishvili. She studied philosophy then went to Germany to study film making it is in scriptwriter with Simon Gross she has made a number of films including the well-received In Bloom.  The book has also  been translated into German.

On the outskirts of Tbilisi, where most of the streets have no names and where whole neighbourhoods consists of nothing but soviet high rises grouped into blocks, grouped in turn into microdistricts, lies Kerch Street. There’s nothing worth seeing here, no historic buildings, o fountains, no momuments to soceity’s great accomplishments, jusy tower blocks lining both sides of the street and, now and then, anpother building tucked between them: the college of light industry, up in the plateau surrounded by spruce trees; the kindergarten; the municipal middle school; the officesof the housing managment committee; a small shopping centre; and at the very end of the street, the Residential School for the Intellectually Disabled Children or, as the locals call it, the school for Idiots

The opening lines of the book the grim reality of post soviet Georgia.

The Pear field is set on Kerch street in the capital of Georgia Tbilisi where is the residential school for disabled children or as it is locally called the school for idiots. The book opens and we meet Lela she is in her late teens and could leave the school and go beyond the pear fields but she has stayed for just two reasons which are the driving force for the book. We learn that she really wants to kill her history teacher and then alongside this is the story of Irakli a young boy that Lela has taken under her wing, every week they go to their neighbors of the school for the young boy to ring his mo0ther but over time it is clear the mother is just paying the young boy with her lip service as the story unfolds we see the school the pupils and also the dark reason behind her wanting to kill her teacher. Then there is hope for her young friend as an American couple wants to take the young man to the US to start a new life with the help of Lela and the neighbor Lena they try to help the boy get the American dream.

The school began to lose teachers as well. Only Tiniko, Dali, Vano and Gulnara are left from the old guard Nowadays new teachers come, they teach a few lessons, realize the school has nothing to offer them and go again. New children have stopped arriving too. Maybe parents todays are less willing to abandon their children or maybe there are better schools out there to abandon them in maybe idiots just aren’t being born anymore.

That is why everyone is so suprised when one day the gates open and a well-dressed young woman in her thirties walks in with a girl aged about nine The girl ;ooks smart and well cared for but aso nervous and guarded. Lela strokes the little girl’s hair, then walks them over to Tiniko’s office. Tiniko is expecting them, the woan explains that the little girl is related to her husband, Having lost her parents, she was being raised by her grandmother, Now that she has died, the child’s relative have decided to leave her with the school.

There is the hated teacher Vano for what he has done to her and other pupils over the years.

Well for those of you that don’t know my job is working with learning disabilities. I spent twenty years working in the community a few years ago taking a ward-based role on an assessment and treatment unit where we deal with people in crisis to help them get back in the community. The school setting was like the old institutions the ones I have to look after people were in before things t=change her so Lela’s story of Abuse. It is one I have heard not so much sexual but a lot of physical abuse years ago when people viewed people with learning disabilities like they still do in this book. This is the story of a mother hen to those in the school like young Irakli. But as her heart, she is a damaged young girl who has no memories outside the school and has been damaged by what her teacher had done to her.  This is an interesting finish to the closed universe series Lela world isn’t beyond the pear field just yet but their chance of breaking out is there also this is going on with the background of the break up of the soviet union had just happened and Georgia is still a new state and the school has suffered due to this. If you like post soviet books that look at the personal lives of those involved this is one for you. Have you read this book?

The book of Tbilisi

 

The book of Tbilisi by Various

Georgian fiction

Stories translated by Philip Price, Mary Childs, Maya Kiasashvili, Nino Kiguradze, Tamar Japaridze and George Siharulidze.

Source – review copy

I am never the most proactive at reading short stories, but sometimes when I get the chance with a collection like this it is a wonderful chance to get a glimpse into a new country. I’m not sure how many books from Georgia are out there to be read. As Ann Morgan point out on her world tour, this is changing as the government of Georgia is putting money in translation. So as Comma as brought its latest collection of city-based stories to Georgia to the capital Tbilisi and these writers.

 Ina Archuashvili, Gela Chkvanava, Erekle Deisadze, Shota Iatashvili, Dato Kardava, Lado Kilasonia, Zviad Kvaratskhelia, Bacho Kvirtia, Iva Pezuashvili & Rusudan Rukhadze 

I’ve included the links to the comma bio pages of each writer.

Like most men, Baldy looked old for his age. He lit up his cigarette and asked Redhead what it was that couldn’t wait until the morning. In reply, Redhead said he wanted a story, a real one with blood, corpses – in other words something scandalous.

Baldy took him to his neighbour, a former investigator who had seen a lot in his time, having worked for both Soviet and Georgian police forces.

The rookie reporter listens to the older mens dicatapes.

The collection has ten tales in it. The first we meet a rookie newspaperman called Redhead is shown a tape by his fellow journalist Baldy an older man. That thinks he has found a gem of an old story about the killing of a man a few years ago. We follow him as he listens to the tapes from the time the tale of Uncle Evgeni a popular figure when the country first gained independence even sparking protests. in Dato Kardava story the naive reporter listens to the tapes and as the past unfolds he learns what happen back then. Then we see a piece of graffiti on the side of one of these old block of flats about a couple. This causes all the locals to go to facebook and find all Thea to see just who she was in the piece that said Anzor and THEA = LOVE. Then a young boy is looking after his sister as she is dying and he is getting no help from the state a sad tale. Then a quiet woman is the talk of three blocks of flats after she moves in with her husband but speaks with no-ones until the last line of the story after she is suspected to have run off. There are six other tales.

Her name is Peride. She doesn’t talk to anyone, and doesn’t pay attention to anyone either. It’s a blessing that I remember when she and her rusband first moved here more than thirty years ago. Otherwise, I might have believed she was not of this world, and that they’d brought her here from a parallel universe.

A woman moved in to the block years ago but never talks to her neighbours.

This is a great glimpse into a country that is just waking from its Soviet past. The one thing you found in the sense of a new world emerging after the bleakness of the place some were very sad especially the sister died in the rail carriage it made you feel how lucky we are. As with other collection I have read over the years like the Granta writer series the Spanish one, I do hope we get to read some of these writers in either fuller story collections or novels there is a wonderful chance with these ten stories to turn them into ten books and thus grow a library of Georgian fiction where we find out more about this country where neighbours are close and nosey and the world they are living in is bleak at times but also showing the small glimmer of want to grow and flourish again.