“The theme of a rural wedding is quite traditional, the plot device is partly suggested by Vysotsky’s popular line “then they caught the groom and beat him for a long time,” but still, when reading, you are left with the impression of both aesthetic and psychological novelty and freshness. Here, a bright, multifaceted (and if you look closely, they all look the same) village wedding appears as some kind of gigantic elemental force, as one violent living organism. And yet, these “red-faced” (from drunkenness) have their own charm, and the author writes about them with carefully hidden, but love. In general, Babayan doesn’t actually have negative heroes, although he doesn’t idealize our lives at all, but usually paints them in gloomy colors.”

Boris Sokolov.