The Syndrome of Petrushka

Dina Rubina accomplished the impossible—she combined three different genres: an exciting, and at the same time almost gothic, novel about dolls and doll-makers, pulling together the poles of history and art; a family detective story and a psychological drama traced from vivid childhood and youth memories to mature gray hair.

Passions even here “tear” the heroes apart. A man and a doll, a doll-maker and a rebellious doll, a person as a doll—in the hands of fate, in the hands of the Creator, subordinated to family inheritance?—this deep and multi-dimensional metaphor is turned by the author in many different directions, never resorting to straightforward analogies.

And Rubina’s mastery of literary “painting,” landscape and portrait—always top level—feels like you eat, slice by slice, the fragrant delicious taste of the air and end up suffocating from the pleasure.