"The Little Black Sheep" is a strange book. It's hard to say what it's about and what genre it's written in. Autobiography? Mysticism? Psychological sketch? Magical realism? Rather, it is the perception of the world by a child who grew up in a very eclectic family and country, where incompatible things were combined: cruelty and mercy, paganism and orthodoxy, naivety and cunning, generosity and avarice, hatred and love.The heroine's great-grandmother and grandmother were born in Udmurtia and were witches, her parents did not believe in God or the Devil, and who was the girl? A little bit of everything, and on her own - like a cat or the grass by the roadside. An ordinary Soviet schoolgirl - no longer a village girl, but not yet a city girl, not a pioneer, faithful to the precepts of Lenin, but not a nun either, not a bully, but not the first student of the school. She often went to funerals and cemeteries with her witch grandmother, but she was desperately afraid of the dead, who came to her in her dreams, felt places of power, was fond of magic and believed in spirits, but at the same time she read clever books, was friends with boys and was heard among them as a "tomboy". She was also afraid of losing her family because all her relatives had died young.It was believed that they were haunted by an evil fate, a generic curse. But is it true? The American Robert Ingersoll asserted that "in nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences". So maybe there is no mysticism - just children unconsciously repeating the fate of their parents, hitting the same bumps and not learning from mistakes? Seeing themselves as hostages of the "curse," they cannot have a personal life, they drink, commit suicide, die in accidents. Or is it still the fault of evil fate? To find out, the girl plunges into her past, as Don Juan would say - she makes a "recapitulation". Yes, in some places her memories are naive and chaotic - like a compote, there are family dramas and horror stories about dead people, friendship, love, hatred, searching for her way, complex relationships with the world and the men. But, as already mentioned, "The Little Black Sheep" is an unusual book, written by an inner child. And so - through images and emotions, children recognize the world around them.So "be like children" and never forget that we live in a wonderful, magical world where we create our own reality. Magic is not outside, it is within!