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The story in 9 parts

1. Key idea 1 · free to read

   A spring road leads the boy toward hope

   The book opens with a carriage ride. Two carriages wait at the door of the country house at Petrovskoe, and the family sets out for Moscow. Nicolinka rides with his older brother Woloda and the servant Vassili.

   Nicolinka is surprised to find that he is not sad. The closed door of his mother's room, the covered piano and the black mourning clothes are left behind, and with them the guilt he felt whenever he caught himself smiling. In their place come new sights, and the spring brings him a quiet hope.

   Then the thunderstorm comes. Heat, dust and black clouds gather, and a dread of thunder grips the boy. A crippled beggar with red stumps for hands crawls out from under a wooden bridge and begs for a copeck, and Nicolinka is chilled with horror. When the rain passes, he jumps down, tears off sprigs of wild thyme and runs to the girls' window to make them smell it. The beggar also stays in the reader's mind, a first sign that suffering lives outside the family's carriage.

   Grief loosens its grip when a person lets the living world back in.

2. 2

   A talk in the carriage changes everything

   Katenka sits beside Nicolinka in the carriage, and he notices a sadness in her face that does not belong to a child.

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3. 3

   Brothers quarrel, and a maid stirs new feelings

   Nicolinka is only a little younger than Woloda, but in Moscow he begins to feel the gap.

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4. 4

   An old tutor tells the story of his life

   Trouble begins with a small pile of shot on the floor.

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5. 5

   One bad mark begins a day of disasters

   On Lubotshka's birthday, guests fill the drawing room while the boys wait upstairs for the history teacher.

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6. 6

   Alone in the dark, he dreams and hates

   In the storeroom, silence presses on him.

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7. 7

   A boy thinks so hard that he loses himself

   Alone and lonely, Nicolinka spends his spare hours on the biggest questions he can find.

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8. 8

   Servants and strangers hold the book's sincerity

   The book keeps returning to people who have little power but enormous feeling.

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9. 9

   A man looks back and lets small scenes speak

   Boyhood is told by a grown man, and his voice is the book's great gift.

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