The events happened at the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century in Stanyslaviv, Austria, a city in the eastern part of the Empire, which nowadays is Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

One evening a former student of Doctor Anger and an old friend of both girls, priest Josyf Ridny, comes over to visit the household; meanwhile, Stefaniia recalls all childhood and youth insults from Adelia.

He causes many troubles to the couple by hiding away for three days, painting over Dr. Anger's maps, but soon Petro becomes closer to the boy while Adelia struggles to get in touch with him.

Ernest Thorn, a magician from a circus troupe, comes to visit the family to take Feliks back, telling about his background story and suggesting compensation for the boy.

On her way to the clothing store, Stefaniia meets Velvele, who tells her about the rumors that she cannot live without her mistress and suggests she leaves with him to go overseas and start a new independent life, but she immediately rejects the offer.

Except for searching for inspiration in historical works about her hometown published in the “Moye Misto” series, Sofiia Andrukhovych also used the newspaper “Kurjer Stanisławowski,” issued at the beginning of the 20th century as a reference for the XX-century daily atmosphere and analyzed the life of local people.

Her unwillingness to break the promise she gave herself to take care of Adelia does not allow her to fully realize her worth of love, independence, and respect.

Vitaliy Chernetsky, in his article "Sofiia Andrukhovych's Felix Austria: the postcolonial neo-Gothic and Ukraine's search for itself," discusses that: The references to Ol'ha Kobylians'ka are especially strong and numerous, in the emotionally intense relationship between female characters echoing her "Valse mélancolique," and also in the emotionally intense, homoerotically charged correspondence she carried on with Lesia Ukraïnka; Stefaniia's last name, Chornen'ko, directly hints at the latter, as khtos' chornen'kyi, "someone dark-haired," was the cryptonym for Kobylians'ka used in the correspondence.

One of the critics, Ievhen Stasinevych, noted the “various homages, witty winks at the reader, serious paraphrases and fruitful interpretive allusions,” emphasizing the importance of this literary work.

[3][5] Alongside Stasinevych, Andrii Drozda also highlighted Andrukhovych’s attempt to trick the readers as the illusionist Ernest Thorn - while she points out the beautiful pieces of art and sculpture, she quickly creates drama and intrigue and promptly dissolves it.

[6] Nevertheless, Vladyslav Ivchenko poses many questions to the text and the author and concludes his critique in a negative way, highlighting that Andrukhovych created the book only for self-pleasure, without caring about the readers.