In "Queen of Spades," Anna, a successful ophthalmologic surgeon in her sixties; her daughter, Katya; and Katya's teenage daughter and young son live in constant terror of Anna's mother, a domineering, autocratic, aging former beauty queen. In "Angel," a closeted middle-aged professor marries an uneducated charwoman for love of her young son, raising the child in his image. In "The Orlov Sokolovs," perfectly matched young lovers are pulled apart by the Soviet academic bureaucracy. And in the novella "Sonechka," the heroine, a bookworm turned muse turned mother, reveals a love and loyalty at once astounding in its generosity and grotesque in its pathos.
