Days of our life

The story of a teenager navigating their turbulent coming-of-age in the 2010s is told with a raw honesty and gripping sensitivity. Yet it is also a story which contemporary Russia is perhaps not ready to hear. The novel’s protagonist grows up in a household with two gay parents, after being adopted by his uncle and his partner after his mother dies. It is a story which may not seem remarkable in many Western countries, but in Russia, such arrangements remain surrounded by judgement and fear. Franco tells the story in all its beauty, joy, pain, mundanity, and overwhelming realness.