“A young man and a girl, having barely passed puberty, fell in love with each other. The girl was affected accordingly - she carried and gave birth to a baby-down .. Lovers in horror mental trauma, hysteria, discord. From the child they refuse no one agrees to sacrifice their young, unremarkable, but still the only life for the sake of a hopelessly sick offspring. As a result, the parents of the young man take a grandson-down to be brought up. The main thing that happens and captures the reader in the book is the process of humanizing the protagonist through communication with the capricious, touchy, inferior and, in general, inhuman (but still native) being Vanya .. And Vanya is also humanized .. Humanized without changing metamorphosis is not experienced by the character, but by the attitude towards him of the reader, in whose mind the author makes a clear shift....the novel is strong. It's very strong.". P. Krusanov