Antonia Bayett's novel serves as a reason to talk about the turning point of eras, family secrets, and the maturation of children in a rapidly changing world. Participants meet to discuss the third and fourth parts of the book, share their discoveries, controversial moments, and questions that remain between the lines. Book clubs become the place where complex texts cease to seem unattainable, and the conversation about literature turns into a lively dialogue about one's own life. Antonia Bayett's novel, which participants read in parts, provides rich material for such a conversation: here childhood and adult responsibility intertwine, fairy tales and harsh historical reality. At the center of the discussion is the second half of the book, where the Victorian order gradually gives way, and new ideas come to the forefront. Suffragettes, anarchists, artists and collectors, educators and bankers-all the characters find themselves caught up in changes that alter familiar roles in family, marriage, and society. Readers, together with the host, try to see how these processes reflect in the private stories of children and adults, and how they resonate with today. A particular interest lies in how the "homes" of the characters are arranged in the novel. The estate of the children's writer, the home of the museum curator, the workshop of the gloomy potter, the dwelling of a young man connected with radical ideas-all these spaces become extensions of the characters and their beliefs. The conversation about the settings smoothly transitions into a discussion about personal boundaries, secrets, and what is customary to hide even from the closest ones. The host of the meeting, literary scholar and journalist Polina Maximova, helps to analyze the text carefully and attentively. Participants can ask questions about the cultural and historical context, clarify unclear details, and share their own associations with real events and biographies. Thus, the conversation about the novel turns into a collective exploration of the era in which our familiar notions of childhood, freedom, education, and creativity were born.