Our desires, aspirations—and ultimately our very lives—depend too much on biological processes in the body. This bleak conclusion is reached by Olga Lugovskaya at an age threshold that delicately is called post-Balzac age. But how should she live if human relationships, it turns out, are governed only by primitive laws? Everything that seemed so solid to her—a happy marriage, a kind and finely organized world—doesn’t survive a simple test of age. Would mother’s advice help? Maybe not—because mom had a different “test” behind her: the war. Yet something common is still present in the destinies of different generations in the Lugovskys’ family—one single, very precise tuning fork…