In this collection of wine-soaked stories, former Time
journalist Steavenson recounts her adventurous two years living in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Few journalists would have the gumption to do on assignment what the now 32-year-old Steavenson did on a whim—leave a job in Time's London office in the late 1990s for the relatively volatile region of the Caucasus. Her reward is a book, her first, that Chekhov himself would have admired. With a keen journalistic eye and a poetic flair for capturing every detail of her surroundings, Steavenson adeptly renders a vibrant if rather depressed culture amid the detritus of a collapsed superpower. The book is replete with harsh winters, hot summers, rolling blackouts from a shortage of electricity and a crumbling infrastructure, plentiful vodka and bad cigarettes, hearty friends, and an endless number of LAOs (large abandoned objects): bits of rusting pipeline, tractors, half-built bridges, "the debris of the Soviets, the husk of an empire." While each story seems to contain within it several others, most compelling are Steavenson's encounters with Chechen refugees and fighters after the second Russian war in Chechnya broke out. A chapter on the fixed election of "career communist" turned "western media darling" Eduard Shevardnadze is also insightful. Despite its title, it's clear these stories are anything but stolen. And Steavenson returns the favor. After turning down a marriage proposal from her boyfriend, a photographer, he sends her 1,000 roses—a stunning gesture that is surely still recalled among Georgians. This is a remarkable first effort from a writer to watch. (Mar.)
