Katania
When I was a child, I had a family of doll people. They lived in a red shoebox painted to look like a house, with a dark-brown roof and yellow awnings. …
What Petrushevskaya's family lacked was a father—but a father doll was a true rarity. Most kids she knew didn't even have fathers. Fathers had a tendency to die, or lose themselves to alcoholism, or simply "up and go." Fatherlessness was so common the Soviet authorities were aware of it.