Maniac Gurevich - Dina Rubina (9789669938381)

It is not for nothing that the novel “Maniac Gurevich” has the subtitle “biography in pictures” - in it the author for the first time combined two literary forms: a novel extended in time with a whole garland of “pictures” about Dr. Gurevich from his early childhood to the present day: funny, ridiculous, touching, poignant, sad or homerically funny. Thanks to this movable design, the book “breathes easily.” The action rushes without being sagged by the ponderous backside of high morality, without torturing “philosophical ideas,” without sitting heroes on buskins, which is what so-called “serious premium literature” now sins with. At the same time, in Dina Rubina’s novel there is both the depth of experience and the acuteness of sensations of human existence.

Dina Rubina turns to the genre of “biographies in pictures,” which allows you to turn a biography into a fascinating set of stories. And what, in fact, remains after a person? - Of course, stories. But the brighter the person, the more stories there are, and the wider the range of his personality, the more diverse the stories. The main character is Semyon Gurevich, a psychiatrist. Agree, this has already said a lot. Tragic and funny. As a person with a “borderline psyche and manic consciousness,” he gets stuck in many absurd and paradoxical situations. And his kindness and cordiality towards his patients evoke sympathy, light sadness and admiration in the reader.