The Young Wife

The main character, Manya, marries not for love, but out of hopelessness and despair. She feels safe behind her husband—a widower, a solid and strong host, as if behind a stone wall. But she wants to push this wall away to see the sun, the sky, and freedom.

Irina Velembovskaya always wrote with love and great respect about ordinary people who survived a terrible war and are building their lives in the difficult post-war years. Her heroines are very different: naive and simple-minded, like Alya from "Women", Manya from the story "Like Behind a Stone Wall", cunning ones whom people say have "something on their mind", like Anna Dobrokhotova from "Sweet Woman", honest and straightforward, like Marisha Ogonkova from the eponymous story, Varvara from the tale "Laryon and Varvara". But they are all united by a passionate, irresistible desire to find happiness at all costs, to love and to be loved.
The story "Like Behind a Stone Wall" is the basis for the film "The Young Wife", which was named the best according to a poll by the magazine "Soviet Screen". It featured stars—Anna Kamenkova, Vladlen Biryukov, Galina Makarova, Sergey Prokhanov. The director was Leonid Menaker, the author of many popular and beloved films.

But the film would hardly have been successful if Velembovskaya's story had not been so talentfully written.