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Chapters 1 & 2

• The narrator recalls visiting his French grandmother in Russia. He flips through old photo albums and sees a scruffy-looking woman wearing a man's shapka.

• The narrator says his grandmother, Charlotte seemed to panic when he saw the picture and would not answer any questions about the woman in the picture.

• A second memory is of him and his older sister breaking fragile rocks from their grandmother's collection and her tearing when she sees them.

• The rocks have memories for Charlotte and she begs the children to collect the rocks they fling out the window. The children are ashamed at their behavior.

• The children retrieve the rocks and she sits and tells them stories of the Paris flood and they struggle to separate fantasy from reality.
• The narrator talks of the Russian cities in which his grandmother lives. She is unlike the rest of the elderly women in...

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