"Sincerely yours, Shurik" by Lyudmila Ulitskaya, summary

Written in 2003, the novel chronicles the life of Alexander Korn, nicknamed Shurik, who grew up fatherless under the wing of his mother and overbearing grandmother. The book’s central theme is the psychological deterioration of this otherwise obliging man, whose exaggerated pity for women and a desire to be a "good boy," instilled from infancy, lead to emotional devastation and a series of tragic accidents for those around him. In 2004, the work won the Russian national award "Book of the Year" in the "Prose of the Year" category.

Cultivating feelings and the burden of guilt

Shurik grew up in Moscow amidst a cult of women. His mother, Vera Alexandrovna, a former student at the Chamber Theater, had an unsuccessful twenty-year affair with the married pianist Alexander Levandovsky. Shurik’s father was killed in a car accident shortly after his birth. His grandmother, Elizaveta Ivanovna Mukoseyeva, a free woman from a merchant family who graduated from the Sorbonne and taught French, assumed all responsibility for the household and his grandson’s upbringing. The family revered the memory of his grandfather, Korn, who received the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun in 1916.

In high school, Shurik had his first sexual encounter with the sculptor Matilda Pavlovna. At the same time, he fell in love with Lilia Laskina, a fellow student at the university lecture hall. When attempting to enroll in the Philology Department at Moscow State University, a bureaucratic snafu resulted in Shurik being placed in a group taking a German language exam instead of a French one. Proudly refusing to take the exam, the young man spent the last week before the Laskin family emigrated with Lilia. During this time, his grandmother suffered a heart attack and died in her sleep. Shurik forever associated the loss of his grandmother and the departure of his beloved with his own unforgivable guilt.

Student turmoil and a sham marriage

Shurik took his documents to the neighboring Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology. Chemistry was a struggle, but he received help from his classmates: the gifted mathematician Zhenya Rozenzweig, the assertive Kazakh woman Alya Togusova, and the Siberian woman Lena Stovba, the daughter of a prominent party official. Vera Alexandrovna’s thyroid condition worsened. Shurik assumed full responsibility for the household and caring for his mother, leaving her with the status of an unrecognized artist.

The hero’s personal life consisted of subordination to the impulses of others. On New Year’s Eve, he was seduced by his mother’s overbearing boss, Faina Ivanovna, then insisted on sex with Alya Togusova, and his Monday meetings with Matilda continued. Lena Stovba became pregnant by a Cuban student, Enrique, who was soon arrested in his home country. Saving the girl from shame in front of her despotic father, Shurik arranged a sham marriage with her and met Lena from the maternity hospital with their newborn daughter, Maria.

Library Service and Valeria’s Tragedy

After dropping out of chemistry, Shurik enrolled in the evening program at the Pedagogical Institute and found a job at the Lenin State Library. The department was headed by Valeria Adamovna Konetskaya, a striking beauty who limped on crutches due to the aftereffects of childhood polio. Valeria dreamed of having a child and made Shurik her lover. When she became pregnant, doctors insisted on an abortion due to her extremely fragile bones, but Valeria refused.

In the winter, she suffered a pathological hip fracture near the Ararat restaurant. The hospital failed to save the premature baby girl, and Valeria was permanently unable to walk. Shurik considered himself primarily responsible for the disaster and became the bedridden woman’s devoted caregiver, courier, and co-author of translations.

Maria’s return and ballet career

Vera Alexandrovna underwent thyroid surgery and organized a theater group for neighborhood girls in the basement of the housing office. Lena Stovba brought her grown daughter, Maria, to Moscow. Vera developed a maternal passion for the dark-skinned and artistic girl. Maria was enrolled in first grade and then enrolled at the Moscow Choreographic School at the Bolshoi Theater.

Shurik drove Maria to classes on Frunzenskaya Embankment every day, tutoring her in English and Spanish. For years, Lena Stovba sought a way to join Enrique through sham marriages. The plan initially fell through in Poland when Enrique’s brother married another woman, then Lena married a Spanish student, Alvarez. Before her final departure abroad, Lena spent the night in Shurik’s room, which Vera Alexandrovna unwittingly witnessed. His mother considered her son’s behavior a cynical betrayal of the ideals of pure love.

Dangerous Liaisons and Persecution

New women were drawn into Shurik’s entangled circle. Svetlana, a funeral wreath maker who suffered from manic-depressive psychosis, dropped a fossilized mammoth tooth on his foot, after which she forced him to treat her for a sore throat and made him the object of his obsessive stalking. She kept a secret notebook recording his every move and regularly blackmailed him with suicide attempts.

After Zhenya Rosenzweig’s wedding, Shurik succumbed to the advances of the dwarf Zhanna, the bride’s cousin. When Zhenya left his family for the laboratory director, Inna Vasilyevna, Shurik began to console his abandoned wife, Allochka. During a summer job as a translator for French tourists, he met a student named Joelle from Bordeaux. After a party at Gia Kiknadze’s school friend’s, Shurik was brutally beaten in the street by Rashid, a Caucasian man who mistook him for the lover of the model Jamila. He was hospitalized with a broken jaw and a concussion.

The denouement at the bedside of the past

Valeria died suddenly in the hospital from a pulmonary embolism. A secret funeral mass was celebrated in her room by Brother Domenik, a priest who had come from Lithuania. At the wake, Shurik encountered the deceased’s drunken friend, Sonya, whom he then treated for two days at his home, saving her from her aggressive brother.

By the age of thirty, Shurik felt aged and tired. He realized that in his entire life, he had never chosen a woman of his own free will, only responding to others’ needs and cries for help. On the eve of his anniversary, Lilia Laskina flew to Moscow for a 24-hour layover en route from Paris to Tokyo.

They spent the night and morning strolling through the autumnal alleys of Zamoskvorechye, reminiscing about their youth and feeling genuine warmth. Svetlana, noticing them together, fell into despair. Returning home, Shurik, for the first time, refused to immediately elope at Svetlana’s first request. The insulted woman hanged herself from a chandelier hook in her room.

Shurik accompanied Lilya to Sheremetyevo Airport and delivered a parcel of wool yarn to her elderly relative, Tsilya Solomonovna. As he walked to the bus, he felt inner peace and freedom for the first time in years. Meanwhile, on the plane, Lilya jotted down bitter thoughts about Shurik — a gentle, saint-like man who had completely lost his own life.