In The Pear Field by Georgian filmmaker Nana Ekvtimishvili, a teenage girl left in the care of a residential school plans to murder the teacher who abused her. Lela has no memory of what her life was like before coming to the Residential School for Intellectually Disabled Children (or “School for Idiots,” as it is known locally), situated next to a boggy field crowded with pear trees in a run-down neighbourhood of Tbilisi, in post-Soviet Georgia. At eighteen, Lela’s formal education is complete. She longs to escape but knows no other existence, and since prospects for supporting herself and living independently in the outside world are poor, she stays on at the school and soon after we meet her assumes the position of gatekeeper. Lela is neither disabled nor intellectually challenged: the school also serves as a dumping ground for children who have been abandoned by their parents and families, usually for economic reasons. Furthermore, it is rife with dysfunction: chronically understaffed and underfunded, its infrastructure in a state of near collapse, and rotten to the core with corruption and abuse. With few pleasures available to them, Lela and the other children find occasional solace in small acts of rebellion, like raiding the cherry tree of a mean-spirited neighbour. The story Ekvtimishvili tells in her short debut novel concerns Lela’s sympathetic bond with eight-year-old Irakli, a boy whose mother has left him behind at the school. Lela, sensitive to his plight and affected by his innocence, feels that Irakli has a chance for a new life, but only if he can get away. Holding him back, however, is his conviction that he has no choice but to stay where he is because his mother has promised to return someday. Lela knows this will never happen, and when an American couple decide they want to adopt him, she resorts to a blunt-force strategy to persuade Irakli that his mother’s promises are empty and meaningless. The novel is written in unadorned prose that for the most part simply reports on events while leaving unstated the characters’ emotional responses. The effect of this is chilling, because we realize that Lela and the others—children and adults alike—have been traumatized and hardened by the deplorable conditions under which they live, that because all they know is pain, victimization and scarcity, they expect nothing but more of the same. The pear field stands in for the world beyond the school: a place seemingly filled with promise, but the ground is treacherous and the fruit hard and inedible. Lela provides the narrative perspective. Cynical and world-weary at eighteen, she is a fount of contradictions: impulsive and given to violent outbursts, but frequently kind and generous; selling sex for money, which she then uses to pay for Irakli’s English lessons. Under such dismal circumstances the fact that she is even capable of hoping for a better life is nothing short of a miracle. Nana Ekvtimishvili’s fascinating novel takes English readers into an unfamiliar world where compassion is in short supply and good fortune virtually unknown. It is a memorable journey, but also one that is relentlessly harsh and deeply troubling. ( )

Loneliness, the failure of the state, and the attempted making of a community. I liked this book, though I don't know that the Georgian setting really makes it any different than any novel or short story (or memoir) about orphanages and orphans. Abuse, poor education and lack of follow through for those that age out, and dangerous facilities are par for the course. (Really, how different is the foster system, overall, in the US?)
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In post-Soviet Georgia, an orphanage for "slow kids" is steadily deteriorating. A teacher has been abusing young girls for years. A roof leaks so horribly the roof can no longer be used--and a section of wall has fallen out, leaving a multi-story drop to the ground. The pear field has never been usable as it is boggy, and the pears are never eaten. Children are beaten by staff and each other. The teachers are ineffective, many students are illiterate. The kids are their own community--they play with each other and against the neighborhood kids. Not all of the staff are terrible--they are underfunded and overwhelmed. Occasionally people in the neighborhood offer kindnesses to the children--the use of a phone, baskets of treats, food. The children are eligible for adoption, but that rarely happens.

Lela is 18, and can leave. But where can she go? What can she do? So she stays, helping with the kids and finally landing a small job. Students age out and may come back a few times, but then disappear. She wonders where they have gone and wishes to join them. She takes a few of the younger students under her wing, wanting to help them. Especially Irakli, 9, whose mother is still alive but in Greece. Lela does everything she can to give him the opportunity she wishes she had. And just as she has Irakli's back, another student has hers. ( )

I think that this can best be described as unflinching. Brutal is another word, but it is all very matter of fact and that seems to take the edge off the horror that is xdescribed so very casually in here. If you are easily upset by child abuse, I'd give this one a miss.
Lela is 18 and has been in the institution locally known as the School for Idiots for some years now. She should have left 2 years ago, but has nowhere else to go, no family, no where. And so through her you hear about the state of the school, the surrounding area and what goes on in a crumbling system. She has not let the system grind her down and part of the tale related to Irakli, a younger boy whose mother left him at the school and who regularly promises to come and get him - and never does. When there is the chance to be adopted by an American couple, Lela pushed Irakli forward in order to make his life better.
She is such an engaging narrator, and this is written in such liquid prose that you almost miss the horrific circumstances that these children are living under and what they suffer. This is all repoted in such a matter of fact way that it seems to be entirely normal, and in their world it probably is. A book worth reading, but not for the faint of heart. ( )

Grim Georgian Orphanage
Review of the Peirene Press paperback edition (2020) translated from the original Georgian [book:მსხლების მინდორი|25530738] (Pear Field) (2015)
[TW: Child Abuse, Sexual Assault]

The rather cheery bright green leaf bough on the preliminary cover for The Pear Field is deceptive as the actual pear field in the novel is a muddy sodden tract with trees bearing bitter fruit and which is the scene for assaults of a hazing nature for the children who live at the institutional orphanage across the way. The final publication cover is more subdued.

This was grim reading in the most part with the only relief being the spirited lead character Lela who plans a departure for herself and a 9-year-0ld boy Irakli from the confines of the institution. Not all will turn out as expected.

I read The Pear Field as part of my subscription to the 2020 Closed Universe series at Peirene Press. The subscription provides for advance copies of the book series. Although the subject matter this year has been on more on a depressing note, I still applaud Peirene for their continued efforts to support international translations. ( )

3.5 rounded to 4 ( )