Book Review: The Pear Field by Nana Ekvtimishvili

I never hear about something special about a pear field, actually I never in my life probably was curious about it and I also don´t remember to ever have visited one. I did some quick Google search ´pear field´, ´special pear field´ but nothing noteworthy came out. I suppose it´s just a matter and question of context.

In full honesty, I have mixed literary feelings about The Pear Field, the debut novel by the film director Nana Ekvtimishvili - translated into English from Georgian by Elizabeth Heighway . It didn´t happen in a long time to be so enthralled by the story while disappointed by the unclarity and versatility of the characters. I know that the conclusion should have been rather said a couple of paragraphs later and definitely not at the very end of my review, by I feel to write it over and over again. Maybe because I am also vain and excited of having noticed this...

The characters of The Pear Field - shortlisted for the latest International Booker Prize edition ; this was my second book from this year´s list and I have another in the reading - are the children from the ´Residential School for Intellectually Disabled Chidren´ situated on Kerch street in Tbilisi - introduced as ´a town in Crimean Peninsula´. An institution also known as the ´School for Idiots´. Those children, some of them abandoned, some of them with one or two relatives visiting once in a while, are tied to their present. They cannot go anywhere and when they disappear later in their life, as adults do, it´s like they never existed. No one really care for them, unless they are useful in a very peculiar way. As the girls who are sexually assaulted by neighbours or teachers.

It is a story about a country not fully dislocated but still shaked by the Soviet past, one of those many accounts about abandoned children with disabilities so popular in the local and especially international media. Yes, there is an American family which is ready to save one of them too, but the chosen one does not cross the ocean to become eventually a famous scientist praised by his small country of origin - Georgia, the country. At least, the young Irakli who was still longing about his mother that disappeared in Greece where she was looking for work, learned some English, while preparing for his American adventure that never happened. An aggressive language which reflects in fact his everyday life. His list includes curses, the words that you need to defend against someone, ´(...) how can I ask someone not to kidnap me?´

The lack of proper words is what Lela suffers when she is dragged by Vaska to have sex. She cannot describe what happened other than by the pure description of the actions, without grasping the meaning of it. 

Lela is actually the most powerful voice amongst the children from Kerch street but I felt that she is least authetic exactly because she was assigned this role. The other children are also unclear characters, sounding often like ghosts walking in groups unable to let themselves separated from each other´s. 

Definitely, I have completely different expectations from this book but reading it was a pleasant surprise of discovering a new author and putting on trial my literary critique skills. Thus, was a great choice of a book, although not the one who in the end was awarded the Booker. 

Rating: 3.5