Amy Webb, a mid-40s New Yorker, is accosted by a self-proclaimed “pet psychic” while walking her rescued German Shepherd one day. The stranger warns her that her dog is miserable. Amy wonders if the odd woman got her signal mixed up and mistook the dog for Amy’s heart.
So begins “A Dog in Georgia,” the new novel by Lauren Grodstein, author of the best-selling books “The Explanation for Everything” and “A Friend of the Family.”
It’s hard for Amy to think her life is anything other than a disaster. Her career as a chef and occasional teacher has stalled. Her once-thrilling kitchen is now as cluttered and chaotic as her life. Her husband, Judd Bernstein, is a towering and charismatic chef who built the buzzy bistro Le Coin and the family’s life around it.
Their marriage began intensely, a relationship founded on hormones and camaraderie as they worked together to propel the restaurant forward. Now their marriage runs on habit, shared pets, and the young man, named Ferry, they raised, now at Cornell. The book also runs through a history of Judd’s infidelity.
A Dog’s Life
While wallowing in a directionless misery, Amy comes to realize that animals have always been her ballast. As a teen, she worked at a Minneapolis shelter. In New York, she became the person who could track a missing dog with a T-shirt and a night-vision camera. In the aftermath of this latest marital crisis, she escapes into the plight of strays she views digitally.One particular story captures her. A street dog in Tbilisi, Georgia, called Angel (Angelozi), used to escort schoolchildren across a busy road. Angel has since vanished, leaving blood in her doghouse and a city buzzing with rumors.
Unable to resolve her trust issues with Judd, Amy impulsively sends a message directly to Angel’s owner, Irine Benia. She says that she’s coming to help in the search. She books a ticket via Paris, pockets a hidden ATM card and $1,000 that Judd insists she take with her, and flies east. She privately acknowledges that it could be all a hoax, but she keeps her fingers crossed.
Georgia On My Mind
Irine’s pink, carved-wood house doubles as the rescue center. The rescue is a warren of rooms, gates, and a dozen barking dogs overseen by three elderly relatives and Irine’s sardonic, bright 17-year-old daughter, Maia. There’s also a lodger, Andrei. He’s a quiet man with startling blue eyes reminiscent of Amy’s philandering husband.Over cake and coffee, then chacha and khinkali at a neighborhood spot, Amy discovers Georgia to be a culture of fierce hospitality and frank talk. Maia walks her down Rustaveli Avenue. They pass sleeping ear-tagged strays and a fenced Orthodox cross installed on the day a pride parade was quashed. Politics isn’t background noise here, but part of the air itself.
However, if Amy is going to locate Angel and get her life back on track in the process, she'll need to learn more about Irine’s family, the Georgian people, their culture, and even their relationship with their dogs.
Caring, Trust, and Truth
At its heart, “A Dog in Georgia” is a travel adventure novel. But it’s also a little unfocused. There are themes about fidelity and trust, identity, and moral responsibility toward the creatures in our care. Mixed into this are healthy doses of geopolitics, exploration of Georgian cuisine, romance, political activism, and social justice.There’s nothing wrong with any of those subjects. But, much like Amy herself at the beginning of the novel, it seems like author Grodstein can’t decide which elements to explore.
For example, the book begins with a supernatural moment (the pet psychic), but never really touches on that element again. In fact, many of the literary pieces Grodstein puts into play aren’t fully resolved by the last page, the fate of Angel being an exception.
However, Grodstein has a distinct voice that allows readers to inhabit Amy’s upended life in a way that’s natural, empathetic, and entertaining. Like many people these days, there seems to be a common perception of a loss of purpose and meaning, a need to reset one’s identity.
Perhaps the best message in “A Dog in Georgia” is its encouragement to let go of attachments that are making you miserable. It asks you to get out there, explore the world, and try to make a difference in someone’s life—even if it’s a dog’s.
