The article introduces into scientific circulation the latest literary material – the novel by A. Markina “The Dollhouse” (2023), where in the atmosphere of “magical realism”, at the junction of prose and poetry, a criminal story and a socio-psychological drama merge. The main attention is paid to the image of the central character – an outstanding provincial intellectual and university teacher, who, on the verge of madness, was inspired by the avant-garde project of physical “restoration” of deceased children, modeling an artificial, “doll” social environment, and in literary terms, partly became a “follower” of Voshchev from A. Platonov’s “The Foundation Pit”.