"The Web of Other People’s Desires" by Tatyana Korsakova, summary Automatic translate

This book is a mystical novel with elements of psychological drama. Published in 2010, it centers on the phenomenon of body swapping, triggered by an ancient artifact. Two completely different women with identical names find themselves linked by a mystical force, forcing one of them to correct the mistakes of the other. The text is written in the first person, alternating contemporary settings with fragments of an ancient diary.

A fatal trip and a change of body shell

The protagonist, a thirty-year-old woman with a strong character, finds a strange pendant in a spring puddle. The jewelry was dropped by a plain-looking girl in thick glasses rushing to a taxi. The heroine takes the item — a thin chain with a red stone — and gets into the same car. The reckless driver constantly takes his eyes off the road. A massive SUV swerves into the opposite direction, resulting in a horrific accident.

The victim wanders through a gray fog, where she discovers a small carved door. Waking up in a hospital intensive care unit, she attempts to stand. The attending physician, Valentin Iosifovich, diagnoses retrograde amnesia. The patient goes to the bathroom. The mirror shocks her: the mouse-gray face of a random fellow traveler stares out from it. Her vision is poor, and her figure is devoid of feminine curves. The heroine’s real body lies in the adjacent room, number thirteen, in a deep coma, connected to a life support machine.

Someone else’s life and new relatives

The heroine’s new name is Eva Alexandrovna Stavinskaya. She’s twenty-three years old, the heiress to Alexander Petrovich’s vast fortune. The former Eva worked as a child psychologist. Visitors arrive at the hospital. Her stepmother, Amalia, is dressed in a leopard-print blouse and is behaving provocatively. Amalia’s stepbrother, Seraphim, smirks. The only kindly person is the housekeeper, Raisa Ivanovna.

The heroine quickly understands the balance of power. She begins to dictate her terms to her family. Amalia is physically attacked, and the insolent driver, Oleg, is immediately fired. The girl moves from her austere bedroom to the luxurious quarters of her runaway mother. She demands delicious food and refuses to tolerate humiliation.

Seva, the paralyzed son of the housekeeper, creates stunning paintings that radiate an inner light. One of them is titled "Summer." The heroine promises Raisa to finance an exhibition for twenty thousand dollars, demanding ten percent of the profits. This acumen confirms her businesslike nature.

Meeting in a dark alley

The heroine travels to her old crime-ridden neighborhood. Local hooligans surround her near the tram depot. One of the guys turns out to be her childhood friend, Vova Kozyrev. The girl asks for protection and asks him to spend the night. In his warm apartment, she tells Vladimir the truth about the body swap.

Kozyrev is skeptical. Knowledge of intimate details from their shared past breaks his distrust. Eva recalls the wire necklace she gave him, the stolen curtain for her New Year’s dress, and their first night together. Vova agrees to help and becomes the newly minted millionaire’s personal driver. Meanwhile, they try to unravel the mystery of the mystical pendant. The stone has transformed into a red spider. The thin chain slowly transforms into a golden web. The ghost of its former owner appears to the heroine, leaving icy messages on the bathroom mirror.

The Mystery of the Ancient Diary

The heroine’s health is rapidly deteriorating. Migraine attacks and nosebleeds sap her of her last strength. Searching for aspirin, Eva breaks into the housekeeper Raisa’s desk. Inside, she discovers an ancient diary with a drawing of an unfinished web. The entries shed light on the nature of the artifact.

The diary’s author was Countess Sophia Shatskaya, who lived in the nineteenth century. Sophia was passionately in love with Prince Andrei Poddubsky, the fiancé of her half-sister, Liza. The girl wanted to hang herself in the barn out of grief, but Stefa’s nanny gave her the "Ghost Web" amulet. The artifact subjugates the victim’s will, slowly draining their life. Prince Andrei died after the wedding because Sophia did not remove the pendant in time.

Confession of a housekeeper

Raisa Ivanovna Poddubskaya is a direct descendant of the princely family. The housekeeper confesses to the crime. She suffers from leukemia and will soon die. The woman wanted to secure the future of her disabled son, Seva. Raya planted the amulet on the former Eva, hoping to arrange a sham marriage. The ghostly web began to act, transforming around the neck of the comatose body.

Orphan Rescue Operation

The family’s finances are managed by Yakov Romanovich Shchiry, a wheelchair-bound crime boss. The old man is perceptive and quickly notices changes in his charge’s behavior. The heroine makes a truce with him and demands a monthly allowance of twenty thousand dollars. Uncle Yasha agrees to fulfill the terms.

Private detective Vitaly Saburin gives Vladimir the address. It turns out that the former Eva had given birth to a child by the scoundrel Serafim. The father forced his daughter to send four-year-old Yegor to a specialized boarding school. She desperately tried to get her son back through a sham marriage to her friend Alexey. Alexey punches Serafim in the face at the dinner table and agrees to marry Eva completely free of charge.

The heroine develops a genuine liking for Yegor. The orphanage’s director, Zinaida Pavlovna, struggles to provide a comfortable life for the sick children, trudging through the mud in rubber galoshes. The institution is desperately short of funds, and the playground is cluttered with rusty metal swings. The heroine and Vladimir anonymously donate new computers and sweets to the orphanage.

Returning home

Guardian Shchiry takes charge of the legal aspects of the adoption. The old man promises to provide Yegor with everything he needs in the event of the heroine’s sudden death. The girl realizes: her earthly mission in this body is complete. The golden net on her hand is almost completely woven. The heroine makes a radical decision.

Eva and Vova spend the night before their hospital visit together. Sincere feelings flare up with renewed vigor. The heroine regrets running away from this reliable man in her youth.

Late at night, she sneaks into room number thirteen. Vladimir distracts the nurse on duty, Olga, with conversations about tea. Eva turns off the bulky life-support equipment. Overcoming the pain, she tears the woven Ghost Web from the neck of her old body. A reverse exchange of consciousnesses occurs in the gray astral fog near the carved door.

New old life

The heroine awakens in her own hospital room with tubes in her throat. Vladimir Kozyrev is leaning over her. Nurse Anna Nikolaevna delivers devastating news. Throughout her coma, Vladimir had been at her bedside, paying for her expensive treatment for six months in advance. The real Eva Stavinskaya has safely returned to her own affluent life.

The former gray mouse radically changes her image. The heiress drives Amalia and Seraphim away, marries Alexey, and takes Yegor home. The talented artist Seva gets his own solo exhibition, the one he dreamed of. The housekeeper, Raisa Ivanovna, quietly dies of an incurable disease.

The main character begins to build her life from scratch alongside her beloved man. In the final scene, they jointly oversee the installation of a vibrant children’s playground on the grounds of the boarding school. Zinaida Pavlovna doesn’t recognize the well-groomed and happy girl as her former subordinate, but she is genuinely delighted by the long-awaited gift.