About this audiobook
A child's view of a Moscow household gives the religious calendar the intimacy of everyday experience. Preparations for holidays, familiar work and conversations with adults become part of the way the surrounding world is understood. Faith is encountered through sounds, tastes, gestures and shared customs before it is expressed as an abstract idea.
Ivan Shmelev connects the rhythm of communal celebration with the particular life of a family and its household. The narrator's attention gives ordinary objects and repeated actions a vivid emotional presence. Memory preserves this world while also allowing its meanings to unfold through the distance between a child's perception and an adult's recollection.
The Holidays section of The Summer of the Lord explores belonging, spiritual tradition and the relationship between private memory and a wider culture. Its descriptive prose invites readers to follow how a year's recurring occasions can shape an understanding of time, work and the people whose presence makes a home recognisable.
