The author unfolds before us the canvas of a whole, very long life. The main character Venya was born in 1912 and died in 2010. At first we see him very young, when another family moves into the apartment where he lives with his mother. Then he is already a schoolboy, he hates the daughter of his neighbors. Then they get married, then separate. He buries her. And now their daughter is looking after him, an old man who has completely fallen into insanity. It would seem that every single fragment of this life is quite ordinary, not out of the ordinary. But it is the consistency, the merciless connection of not the most joyful events that makes you sympathize with the main character, try to understand why everything ended the way it did.