"Maniac Gurevich" by Dina Rubina, summary Automatic translate

"Maniac Gurevich" is a 2022 novel by Dina Rubina about emergency room doctor Semyon Gurevich, written in the genre of lyrical prose with vivid, humorous episodes. Rubina conceived this book at the beginning of the pandemic, consciously wanting to create a "warm" work — without heavy tragedies, without the hero’s death, but with vibrant sadness, laughter, and the warmth of human compassion.

Childhood in Leningrad

Semyon Gurevich grew up in a communal apartment on the Petrogradskaya side of Leningrad, in the courtyard of the Molniya movie theater. Both his parents were doctors. His mother worked at the women’s clinic at the October Railway: blunt and domineering, she kept her son in check and often took him to work with her, making him sit whittle wood chips for vaginal smears. His father was a therapist at Psychiatric Hospital No. 6 on the grounds of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra: a gentle romantic who knew all of Pushkin by heart, he led his son through necropolises and monastery courtyards, managing to drop a poem along the way at any opportune or inopportune moment.

Little Senya is a sickly boy, whom the dear Professor Tour examines with genuine amazement: Gurevich manages to suffer through every childhood illness three times. At the same time, he is unusually active mentally: his father speaks of his son’s "manic imagination," of his inability to distinguish between play and reality. It is precisely this trait — his passionate involvement in everything he undertakes — that those around him will later call him a "maniac."

The communal apartment is a world of its own. His neighbors — the Kuritsyns and the kindest Polina Vitalyevna, who bakes pies nonstop — make up Senya’s colorful childhood universe. He fights his neighbor, Yurka, inventively: one day, having cornered his rival behind a locked door, he shoots a sharp stream of water through the keyhole. Mom immediately grabs her jump rope, and Dad cries out in pity.

Chicken Rock Theme

Family stories coalesce into a separate "chicken theme." His mother, despite her sternness, loves animals very much — as a child, she had a pet piglet named Filya in Rostov, but they wouldn’t let her take him with her during the evacuation. In Leningrad, she and Senya buy three chickens at the Bird Market: Do, Re, and Mi. The boy adores them, distinguishing their personalities. One day, the chickens get soaked, and the caring Senya decides to dry them out by placing them in the oven on low heat. A phone conversation with his friend Timka Akchurin drags on, and by the time Senya mentions the chickens, the smell of fried chicken is already lingering. For the rest of his life, Gurevich avoids chicken and suffocates in cramped, hot spaces.

The second chicken story takes place at a summer dacha in a village near Vyritsa, where Senya’s parents take him for health reasons. The father, left without food with his son due to the lack of a grocery store (the saleswoman, Lyudmila, has gone into hiding), decides, on the advice of the owner, to butcher a chicken. This task, for which the intellectual father is completely unsuited, turns into a half-hour of shameful slaughter in front of Grandfather Nikon. When the chicken’s head finally flies off, the headless bird escapes through the gate and is hit by a bus — the same one that passes by twice a day.

By ambulance

The adult Gurevich works as an ambulance doctor in Leningrad. Beside him is paramedic Timur Fayzulovich, whom he calls "Tima." They take all sorts of calls: drunk men from bathhouses, fainted old men, and all sorts of strange patients.

One of the key episodes is a shift in 1984, in the bitter cold. Gurevich and Tima are transporting an unconscious man from a bathhouse on Vasilievsky Island to a hospital on Vavilov Street — an hour-long blizzard. The hospital is undergoing a "ventilation" (sanitization). The nurse finally lets them in, and Gurevich places the patient in a dimly lit examination room, where, like something out of a horror movie, several blue-faced alcoholics are already lying. At that moment, someone’s heavy hand falls on the doctor’s shoulder.

An elderly patient, Katerina Fyodorovna, emerges from the darkness. She called an ambulance with heart complaints. No fresh medications, no proper equipment. Gurevich sends Tima for more and begins examining the old woman with a thoroughness and warmth she’s never experienced before: he makes her squat, stand on one leg, jog, and talks about dreams and deceased relatives. Her blood pressure is normal. Three days later, a fifteen-page letter of thanks arrives at the station: "No one has ever examined me so carefully and thoroughly in my life, every vein and every eyelash."

In another episode, an ambulance is called to a bathhouse: an elderly woman has become ill. Gurevich leans over the patient in the bathhouse hall, where a "support group" of worried neighbors, unfazed by her lack of clothing, has gathered. At that moment, a dazzling medical student emerges from the couple’s pearly haze, offering help. Both Gurevich and Tima immediately and unanimously agree. After the call, Tima looks at her thoughtful colleague and sighs: "Well, Gurevich… you’re such a maniac!"

Colleagues and the daily life of an ambulance

Between calls, life at the ambulance station is in full swing. Dr. Karetnikov, a bilious man known as a paragon of gallantry with the ladies, works with a student named Lenochka, carrying her bag and quoting Blok. One day, he returns from a call with a face so ugly it’s impossible to approach, and Lenochka hides in a corner with a huge black eye. Karetnikov only admits what happened that evening, after a double dose.

All of this — the challenges, the stories, the colleagues, the fatigue, and the laughter — adds up a portrait of a man who loves his work with the same manic dedication with which, as a child, he’d play the "World Cup" on all fours around the table or bury three chickens in a wooden pencil case. His father once said that Senya had a "borderline mentality" and would have a hard time in society. Society, however, gained far more from this man than it ever realized.