About Music

Arkady Kalina is in love with the violin, but even more - with the sea. He might not love the violin at all: love is complicated when you're fourteen. This "it's complicated" is well known to the gloomy "valenok" Anton,... who is seemingly invisible to his classmates (and, unfortunately, to his female classmates) as well. They also don't hear him drearily playing "Oh, it's not evening" in music school - well, so what, it's just embarrassing! The newly cropped Lyolka in the new neighborhood also feels like an outsider, as the people here do not appeal to her. The only cool guy is a skateboarder nicknamed John - but he doesn't care about her silly piano. The teenagers from Nina Dashevskaya's stories have something to share. Their thoughts, seemingly overheard by accident, are like the piano playing of a neighbor through the wall: the music is familiar but played in their own way, and therefore it captivates. After several pages of text, one doesn't want to part with the characters at all.