Dear Dusya

"Dear Dusya" by Elena Kolina is a charming story about how children and adults see the world so differently. Like every person, the talented girl Mura from a good St. Petersburg family has her own world—Svoymir. Svoymir is on the Fontanka, in an apartment on the third floor of the outbuilding opposite Anichkov Palace. The main in Svoymir is Great-Grandfather, a doctor of Very Difficult Sciences for Understanding, nonpartisan, and also his wife—Main Grandma, and little dolls/figurines. Main Grandma is called Dusya, and Mura wants to be with Dusya always. Mura is only seven, yet she has read the “Kalevala,” speaks two languages, and can square numbers. Mura always takes part in adult conversations and has something to say: she already knows everything about life, about novels, about love—and also the words “integral” and “entropy.” Moreover, Mura knows she was born into the world from the foolishness of her mother Liza and from sex. Liza, Mura understands, isn’t grown-up yet—despite having finished kindergarten, school, university, and being in graduate school. And Mura, although not grown-up either, is definitely not little anymore. No matter how close an adult and a child may be, each of them exists in their own Svoymir. And how hard it can be to hear each other across these separate worlds! Elena Kolina writes easily and surprisingly funny, without the slightest hint of artificiality, while capturing with insight the most fleeting nuances of human emotions. “Dear Dusya” inspires us to look at ourselves from a long-forgotten angle and see what we managed to forget—though we knew it when our world was tender.