Difficult People

"Lalya was born in a bookshelf, but how she ended up in the bookshelf is unknown to science." This household joke was just a statement of fact: as soon as Lalya started reading at the age of three, she swept... up everything that came to hand, whether it was the magazine "Murzilka" or the collected works of Hugo. Lalya's mother was different — for strangers, for her own, and for her. For the girl, her mother was made up of fears: there were dangers everywhere. For example, the danger that she might consider herself smart or beautiful. When people on the street said, "What a beautiful girl you have," her mother hurried to say: "You are not beautiful, you are ordinary!", "Don't listen, don't believe, you are like everyone else." This novel-revelation about the complex relationship between "mother and daughter" is written from an unexpected angle: the mother is also a teenager at heart. Why did our mothers act with us this way and not that? Do they understand us, and do we understand them? Perhaps it is worth understanding, accepting, forgiving, building a bridge so that while holding on to the flimsy railing, we can laugh and humbly cross to the other side, where love awaits us?..