A novel inspired by real life • First three chapters free
The Life Between Staying and Leaving – A Book by Olga Sverchkova
Love, Sex, Money and the Mess of Being Together
Anna lived in St Petersburg, Max in another country, and for almost a year their relationship fit inside a phone: messages, calls, video chats. One winter he went outside because the WiFi barely worked indoors and stood there in the freezing cold just so they could keep talking.
They talked for hours and knew almost everything about each other: childhoods, first marriages, fears, money, the future. Anna was sure she knew Max very well. In many ways she did. Just not in all the ways that would later matter.
They had both been married before, so neither of them went into a second marriage believing that love alone makes two people easy to live with. Maybe that’s why the second time felt more serious. Later, in Tbilisi, they had an Orthodox church wedding, and it meant far more to them than a pretty day for photographs.
Years on, they live in Tbilisi with Anna’s nearly grown son and two dogs. Max cooks, does the shopping, knows where to find good meat and the right tomatoes, drives, picks up their son from school, handles dozens of small daily things, and can still make Anna laugh exactly when she’s decided to be annoyed with him.
The house has three bedrooms: one for their son, one for Max, one for Anna. Max sleeps badly and wanders the house at night, and Anna decided a long time ago that a good night’s sleep mattered more than proving anything by sharing a bed.
This isn’t a marriage you can sum up by saying, “It was all terrible.” Things would be much easier if it were.
Then the landlord tells them he’s decided to sell the house, and offers it to Anna and Max first. At first it looks practical: a price, paperwork, a bank. But Anna quickly notices the real question underneath: does she want to spend the next few years of her life like this, with this man, in this house?
The Life Between Staying and Leaving is a warm, candid, often funny novel about love, sex, money, and how much life happens between “something has changed” and “I need to do something about it.”
What Is This Book About?
Long-distance love creates a strange kind of closeness: no shared laundry, no supermarket, no dishwasher, but endless time to talk. Anna and Max knew each other’s histories before they knew each other’s habits. But knowing what someone’s afraid of isn’t the same as knowing how they act after three sleepless nights. Distance shows you one thing. Living together shows you another.
A lot of their marriage is good. That’s exactly what makes it so hard to explain. Some evenings Max cooks, the dogs station themselves by the table in case of a meat-related catastrophe, and Anna laughs so hard that analysing her own relationship starts to feel absurd. And some evenings are different.
A house isn’t a new sofa. It’s money, paperwork, and years of your life. And the question suddenly isn’t “do you like this house” but “do you want this life.” That’s where the story begins, while Anna and Max are still together, still a family, still nowhere near an answer.
The hardest relationships to understand are often the ones in which the good was real too.
This Isn’t a Relationship Manual
There are no red flags to count here, no attachment styles, no five steps to a happy marriage.
I spent over twenty years practising law in St Petersburg, and that inevitably shaped Anna: she’s a lawyer too, and she also believes almost anything can be understood if you gather the facts and untangle the contradictions.
It works much better when the case isn’t yours.
Once a relationship ends, everyone suddenly understands exactly why. An old argument becomes evidence, an offhand comment from six years ago turns into a warning sign. While you’re still living inside it, nothing is that tidy: an awful conversation can be followed by a lovely dinner, and a man who infuriated you that morning can have you laughing until you cry by evening.
I’m interested in the part before the answer, while they’re still living inside the question.
What’s Inside
The story starts with a house, but it quickly pulls in money, desire, and habit. Anna once had a very different life, with new cars and a house in Cyprus, so she already knows money doesn’t make an unhappy marriage happy. But she knows something else too: having money means having options, especially the first time a woman sits down and works out whether she could actually afford to live on her own.
Then there’s the domestic bookkeeping: Max does dozens of things Anna barely notices, and Anna carries her own share of their life together, most of it so obvious to her that sometimes she suspects Max would need subtitles to notice it. Neither of them is lying.
They’re just keeping different books.
Desire is the hardest part: sometimes it just goes quiet without warning, and you can explain it away with anything respectable: work, exhaustion, age, hormones. The body, it turns out, doesn’t listen to explanations. Each chapter ends with a section called Between Us, a brief moment when Anna steps out of the story and talks directly to the reader about why some perfectly ordinary little thing has suddenly turned out not to be little at all. No instructions, because Anna has enough trouble answering that question herself.
Who This Book Is For
For anyone who’s tried explaining their relationship to a friend and realised halfway through that the short version is a small lie. “I love him” can be true. “He drives me insane” can be true too. A whole life can fit between those two sentences.
For anyone who’s worried about money while insisting money wasn’t really the problem, who’s had a wonderful evening together and still been equally happy when everyone finally disappeared into their own rooms, or who’s discovered that “I could leave” and “I want to leave” are two very different things.
And probably for anyone tired of stories where people understand everything at exactly the right moment, say the right things, and part ways with impressive emotional clarity. Most of us are much less efficient at this, especially when the man you’re wondering whether to leave also knows exactly how you take your coffee and which tomatoes you mean when you say, “Get the good ones.”
Sometimes it’s enough to read a page and think:
God. I’ve done that too.
Read The Life Between Staying and Leaving for Free
Start with the opening chapter, available free on this website, and meet Anna and Max while the questions at the centre of their marriage still look very much like ordinary life.
01. Why We Stay When We Already Know
An ordinary morning in Tbilisi: breakfast, two dogs, school, the market, and a small argument about tomatoes.
Then the landlord says he wants to come by and talk.
Chapter 2. You Can Love Someone and Still Not Want to Live With Them
The landlord offers Anna and Max the chance to buy the house they already call home. Max starts planning. Anna starts making a list.
Then Anna adds one more line under “cons”: “Not temporary any more.”
Chapter 03. Money in Marriage: Everyone Keeps Score, Even Those Who Say They Don’t
Max thinks they should buy the house. Anna asks one perfectly ordinary question: how much can he put towards it?
The answer turns out to be roughly seven per cent of the price.
Contact the Author
If you would like to ask a question about The Life Between Staying and Leaving, discuss the book, publishing, collaboration or an interview, you can contact Olga Sverchkova directly.