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3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
emotional
funny
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
This book is one of the most complex novels I’ve read in a while, and I loved it for that. On the surface, it’s about Saba, a young man living in London, who travels to Georgia to find his brother Sandro — who himself went there to find their father, Irakli, who disappeared years ago. The father once called with the warning: “I left a trail I can’t erase. Do not follow it.” Sandro didn’t listen, then vanished, and Saba goes after him.
The journey through Georgia is surreal, full of strange graffiti, scraps of plays, and little signs from the father. What’s fascinating is that Saba doesn’t understand why his father leaves these crumbs if not to be followed — but that’s exactly the point. We only see Saba’s perspective, and the father’s story remains untold. It reminded us of Hansel and Gretel — the father’s clues are like breadcrumbs, but Sandro and Saba are the birds, picking them up and erasing the trail as they follow it. That tension — between signs left behind and the meaning they were meant to have — is one of my favourite aspects of the book.
By the end, Saba gets really, really close to catching up to his father but makes the choice to stop. And to me, that’s the bittersweet heart of the novel: he chooses to protect the kid he’s with and his friend, instead of chasing someone who doesn’t want to be found. If he’d pushed on, he might’ve endangered them and ended up lost himself. A happy, American-style ending — reunion, closure, fade to black — would have felt wrong here. This is a book about war, trauma, and the fact that sometimes no matter how hard you try, you can’t fix the past. Choosing to stop is Saba’s way of breaking the family cycle of disappearance.
The novel also has a brilliant subplot with his friend and the wife — two parents dealing with the loss of their daughter in opposite ways. The father believes she’s alive because that hope gives him purpose; the mother believes she’s dead because otherwise she imagines her suffering. In the end, the irony is brutal: the mother is the one who gets the daughter back, only to find her deeply damaged, while the father — who was “right” — doesn’t get the chance to care for her.
I also loved the folklore and fairy-tale elements threaded through the story, as well as the random, almost absurd touches like the zoo animals that keep popping up. Those moments give the book a strange charm in the middle of its heaviness alsongside some humor. The voices Saba hears — sometimes from the dead, sometimes from the living — add another layer of ambiguity. Are they magical realism, or signs of a mind under too much strain? It’s never fully answered, and I like that.
Not everything was perfect for me. The plot with the policeman — tied to the people Irakli saved during the war — is one of the book’s major twists, but it feels like it drifts away without full closure. I wanted more resolution there, or at least a sharper sense of its consequences.
The war backdrop is crucial to the book’s tone. The Georgia in this story is shaped by the chaos after the Soviet collapse, the civil wars in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Russian-backed separatists, the displacement of whole communities, and the 2008 war with Russia. Everyone here is marked by conflict, poverty, and loss. And that’s why the ending couldn’t be happy — because in a place where war keeps going, there’s no such thing as a neat resolution. People starve, die, and carry trauma no matter which side “wins.”
Overall, this book isn’t comforting. It’s not supposed to be. But it’s rich, smart, layered, and full of moments that will stay with me — from the Hansel-and-Gretel breadcrumbs, to the irony of the parents’ coping styles, to the absurd beauty of zoo animals appearing in the middle of ruin. It’s a story about letting go, even when you’re so close to the thing you thought you wanted, and about choosing the living over chasing ghosts. And the end of the story still remains untold.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
not enough words to describe how good this book is, but here are a few:
this book put me through so many emotions - it made me tense and scared and sad and remorseful, but there was also joy and hope and SO many laugh out loud moments???? and these emotions felt extra striking because they often came in super close proximity to each other, on the same page i could be devastated but also be laughing, and then on the next page my devastation would be mixed with so much fondness and pride for the characters in the book, and then the next page i would be tense and enthralled in the mystery, and so on. i think this whole jumping between emotions and layering them thing in art is really hard to master, and yet, in my opinion, leo vardiashvili has mastered it.
i'd also highly highly recommend this book if you have ever lived in another place to where you live now, or if you have family living elsewhere. this book made me think about my thoughts on my (physical, geographical) place in the world, who and what i value being in close proximity to, and other topics i have been scared of tackling for a long time (and i still am, and there is still more to tackle, which i guess means it is time for a reread 👀)
this book put me through so many emotions - it made me tense and scared and sad and remorseful, but there was also joy and hope and SO many laugh out loud moments???? and these emotions felt extra striking because they often came in super close proximity to each other, on the same page i could be devastated but also be laughing, and then on the next page my devastation would be mixed with so much fondness and pride for the characters in the book, and then the next page i would be tense and enthralled in the mystery, and so on. i think this whole jumping between emotions and layering them thing in art is really hard to master, and yet, in my opinion, leo vardiashvili has mastered it.
i'd also highly highly recommend this book if you have ever lived in another place to where you live now, or if you have family living elsewhere. this book made me think about my thoughts on my (physical, geographical) place in the world, who and what i value being in close proximity to, and other topics i have been scared of tackling for a long time (and i still am, and there is still more to tackle, which i guess means it is time for a reread 👀)
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
In Hard by a Great Forest we focus on Saba, who fled Georgia as a child with his father and brother during the Georgian Civil War, while his mother, who had no passport stayed behind. Almost twenty years later, living in the UK, first his father and then his brother Sandro disappeared after visiting their former home country. When Saba starts searching for his missing family members, he faces resistance.
Saba arrives in Tbilisi the year the zoo flooded and wild animals like tigers, wolves and a hippo are on the loose in the city giving it a dark fairytale vibe. The title comes from the opening of Hansel and Gretel. His father and brother have laid a cryptic trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow, as he tries to allude the authorities and find them. Saba is helped by the chain-smoking Nodar, a taxi driver, who drives a decrepit Volga and his wife Ketino.
There is a touch of magic realism with the ghosts of Nino, a young girl killed in the war and various dead relatives chatting with Saba. I felt the plot meandered and there was a lot of violence towards people and animals. I was hoping to like it more than I did.
Saba arrives in Tbilisi the year the zoo flooded and wild animals like tigers, wolves and a hippo are on the loose in the city giving it a dark fairytale vibe. The title comes from the opening of Hansel and Gretel. His father and brother have laid a cryptic trail of breadcrumbs for him to follow, as he tries to allude the authorities and find them. Saba is helped by the chain-smoking Nodar, a taxi driver, who drives a decrepit Volga and his wife Ketino.
There is a touch of magic realism with the ghosts of Nino, a young girl killed in the war and various dead relatives chatting with Saba. I felt the plot meandered and there was a lot of violence towards people and animals. I was hoping to like it more than I did.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No