A man and a woman live side by side, share their daily life and fate, yet the feeling between them is by no means bound to arise on its own. With his familiar directness and irony, Горький notes the paradox of family life: love in marriage may not come right away — and may never come at all.
This book is about how relationships change when ordinary coexistence suddenly begins to turn into attachment, interest, and genuine feeling. It is about looking at the person next to you without illusions, about the patience, pride, and vulnerability hidden behind the word “husband” and the word “wife.”
Горький’s concise thought sounds both like an observation and like a question: what must happen for one’s “own” person to become truly beloved — and why does that sometimes require more courage than the first infatuation?