An atmosphere of foreboding permeates a residential school for abandoned children where they are prey to brutal institutional cruelty, sexual abuse and neglect. The detached narrative in present tense imparts a documentary effect, but the details are harrowing and distressing to read. This is the second in the ‘Closed Universe’ series on the theme of isolation and can be viewed as representative of moral decay in post Soviet Georgian society.
‘If climbing the spiral staircase transports Lela to a fantasy world, running onto the pear field fills her with terror, the fear that she might not make it across, as she imagines the branches taking hold, throwing her onto the ground, pulling her body into the soft boggy soil, the roots snaking around her and swallowing her up forever.’
