Short Stories from Georgia

This year I want to extend my world literary knowledge, one country at a time. Literature opens doors and eyes and makes the world sound better. It´s the trustful companion of travel, an activity that unfortunately I cannot pursue right now for very clear Covid19 reasons. Therefore, I am avidly looking for writers from those countries that were on my fictional list of countries to see soon...That ´soon´ expired one year ago...but at least I do my best to get ready by updating my literary knowledge. 

´For my first-ever cooking fiasco, I blame my brother and the day he asked me to make two boiled eggs.

You Will Have a Labrador by Nino Gugunishvili is a (very) small collection of ten short essays touching on everyday impressions of a young Georgian woman. The style is direct, ironic, and engaging. The stories are diverse and not necessarily geographically bounded as the author is moving from Georgia to America and France, searching for love, an omelette and new learning experiences or a new haircut. 

I usually love the casual, intimate short stories, like short feature reports in women magazines, but I did have some issues with You Will Have a Labrador. The book is too short - which is anyway a subjective choice of the author to select just a couple of writings to include in the volume. I needed much more to come along with the style and the topics than just ten essays, covering a bit less than 50 pages. Then, the stories are relatively disparate in terms of quality and style, which for such a short collection may influence definitely the overall appreciation of the writing. 

At the end of the book I was left with the unsatisfied feeling that I´ve been generously invited to a party - and the first essays are really entincing and inviting for more and more stories - only to be hushed and pushed out of the building a couple of essays later. As a curious reader, keen to meet a new writer and her world, it was more than frustrating. At least, I´ve learned a Georgian word: ´ara´ which means ´no´...

However, this short encounter determined me to move forward to improve my knowledge about Georgian life and literature, and I already have another - massive - read on the very top of my TBR. Hopefully, will be able to share my literary Georgian journey very soon.

Rating: 2.5 stars