Word: serioja
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Little Serioja is orphaned. His father was killed in the war, his mother teaches school, and she and Serioja live with an aunt. The boy wonders about the mysteries of life, how his heart beats, or why it is almost a crime when a child breaks a dish and only an accident when a grownup does. Sleeping and waking are the tidal rhythms of a child's life. Awake, Serioja tags after older boys to the forest for a piratical, burnt-finger feast of baked potatoes and onions. Asleep, he is sprawled in his bed with an impish...
...life goes on, Serioja's mother remarries. The stepfather is a kindly sort (he is a collective-farm manager, though the novel is otherwise as apolitical as spring rain) who promises Serioja a shiny bicycle with a red lamp and silver bell. It is the boy's first love affair. There is the thrill of anticipation, the rapture of possession, satiety, neglect, then utter boredom as the bike rusts untouched in a kitchen corner. A new baby brother is expected, but the death of great-grandmother is more awesome. With compassionate wisdom, the stepfather assures the shaken...
Author Panova shares Boris Pasternak's poetic affection for the Russian land. Serioja races across "black velvet ploughland" or watches the white-snow cling like "fat white caterpillars on the branches of the trees." Toward novel's end, the boy tastes bitter desolation when his stepfather is assigned a new post, and it appears that Serioja's health may force the family to leave him behind. At the last moment, seeing that parting will destroy the child, the stepfather scoops him up in a happy ending that is movingly true to the essential spirit of the book...
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