Dina Rubina. The Parsley Syndrome

Dina Rubina has achieved the impossible – combining three distinct genres: a captivating, almost gothic novel about dolls and dollmakers, drawing together the poles of history and art; a family detective story; and a psychological drama, tracing from vivid childhood and youthful memories to mature gray hair.
Here too, passions "tear" the characters apart. Man and puppet, puppeteer and rebellious puppet, man as puppet—in the hands of fate, in the hands of the Creator, subject to family inheritance?—this profound and multidimensional metaphor is turned by the author in a variety of ways, without condescending to straightforward analogies.
Rubina's mastery of literary "painting", landscape and portrait, is, as always, at its best: it's as if you're eating fragrant, delicious air in chunks and suffocating with pleasure.