An Ordinary iStory

How can a provincial girl conquer the capital in our time? Naive, honest, pure—grown up under her mother’s wing and having neither money, nor model looks, nor a university education from the capital. In one word: an idealist. That’s exactly who Sasha Adyeyeva was before she came to Moscow for “finishing” under the care of a rich aunt.

What feats does someone need to perform so that, after seventeen years, her name in her hometown is spoken with awe and envy? This is not a Cinderella story—it’s a novel about life in all its unflattering aspects, with pain and joy, rises and falls, love and hatred. It’s a story about what sweet home girls become when they realize that gifts from fate aren’t coming, and that princes no longer search the corners of the empire for charming, soiled little girls. Here there is something to think about, something to be surprised by, something to cry over. And then—go reread the classics.

The novel was written based on the motives of Ivan Goncharov’s “An Ordinary Story.” How much has changed in our lives since then?