#ReadingJournal This is a remarkable novel about four friends coming of age in Tbilisi, Georgia, during the last stagnation years of the crumbling Soviet Union, and as Georgia declares independence.
Three of the four live around one of the many courtyards that dot their neighborhood of Sololaki and the courtyard and surrounding families feel very immediate as if you could walk in and be right at home.
As the four finish up school they look forward to a future of freedom and promise, but the time and place they were born into make that much more difficult.
In Brussels in 2019, three of the friends are reunited at a retrospective of photographs by the fourth; memories rush back and resentments resurface, but so does their closeness, support, and love for each other.
Reaching the end I was nearly in tears, not because of the ending, but because of all the pent-up emotion I was feeling from the book as a whole and I'm not crier over books. Speaking of the ending, I thought it close to perfect, unlike some longer books where the author seems to lose momentum and the ending is a damp squib.
Nino Haratischwili's writing is compelling and her raw grief over over what happened to Georgians during the 1990s, especially for the women and girls when the traditional patriarchal attitudes become ever more poisonous and twisted, makes the book even more compelling. An unforgettable book.
(Translated by Charlotte Collins, Ruth Martin)
#books #reading @bookstodon
