With one of the main characters of the "Secret species" - the oligarch Fyodor Semyonovich - the reader gets to know when he is resting on his indecently chic yacht somewhere off the southern coast. Fedor Semyonovich is bored. He does not have his own billion, his name is lost at the very end of the Forbes list, but he suffers from the same illness as his more successful comrades: power and money no longer bring him pleasure, and the fulfillment of the most lurking desires does not satisfy. "There was nothing to wear, nowhere to wear," the hero himself describes this problem.
The reflection of Fyodor Semyonovich slowly turns into a chronic form, but suddenly a young businessman Damian appears on the horizon. He offers the oligarch to invest in a promising start-up, selling not some kind of nonsense, but happiness. Soon Fyodor Semyonovich's head will be put on an emo-pantograph, a device that allows you to experience the same sensations as Buddhist monks during meditation.
At first, the oligarch is in complete ecstasy. However, side effects do not make you wait: Fedor Semenovich opens universal truths, capable of shielding any unprepared person.
The hero recognizes the terrible secret: "You are this. This too shall pass". Now the phrase Damian that happiness - self-deception, will play with new colors (or rather, all shades of gray), and Feodor Semyonovich will think how to live after such an opening. And actually, why.
Victor Pelevin, as usual, goes deeper into the subject of spiritual quest: himself, God, and the beginning. His characters are seriously concerned about the issue of the impermanence of being, which, under the influence of external circumstances, becomes painful to them.
These searches risk being endless: as soon as the answer appears, a new task arises, even deeper and more complex. If at first the hero wants to experience something, "because of what the people of the symphony compose," then he already worries about "whether a man needs a lot of bliss". The only way out of this vicious circle is back, to full detail and away from any metaphysical research.
In parallel with the story line of the enlightened oligarch, one more develops: his former classmate Tanya.
Long ago, Tatyana was the first beauty and dream of all the boys in the district, then - "thieves girl", a companion of brave guys in crimson jackets (in the 1990s) and ordinary keepers (in the 2000s). For a long time, Tanya suited everything, but when her long-time benefactor found the muse for several years younger, the girl saw: she, like Feodor Semyonovich, discovered that everything in the world is unsteady. And of all non-permanent things the most impermanent is beauty.
To raise its market value, it is far from young Tanya enters the university, and then decides to start hunting for "big fish". So far - through visualization.
The most honorable place on Tanya's "Dreamboard" is Fedor Semenovich (or rather, once hopelessly in love with her botanist Fedya). Fedya seems to the heroine the most obvious and easy goal: suddenly, in his heart is the memory of the first love alive? .. Fedor Semenovich is a former classmate who is really interested, but as it turns out, there is no romance in this interest. Then, crushed, desperate, Tanya adjoins a half-tent society called "New Hunters."
His current novel, contemporary contemporary writer Pelevin, as expected, wrote "on the fresh tracks." In "Secret Views" not only long-playing topics like fashionable "Skolkovo startups" are played, but also the latest trends: from the beginning of the scandal around Harvey Weinstein it has not been a year, but "the couch for casting" already stands in Fyodor Semyonovich's cabin, and Viktor Olegovich with irony over the idea of feminism and the popular movement of MeToo.
Irony, and sometimes hard satire Pelevin hides under the guise of mysticism. "New hunters" adhere to the views of "esoteric feminism", worship the sacred iguana living in the center of the earth and believe that "the base speed of time sets the average value of all the monthly cycles".
Thanks to female iguanas, Tanya learns that the world emerged from the vagina, and men should be called one unprintable word and used solely for the purpose of reproduction. The ideas of "hunters" are so radical that even readers who are fond of feminism will notice: the spiritual quest for Fyodor looks much more noble than the metamorphosis taking place with Tanya.
Nevertheless, to understand who in this story from Pelevin got more is quite difficult. Everyone received it: Fyodor Semyonovich, who could not digest the fruit of knowledge and fell under the saving heel, and did not defeat his "slavish patriarchal consciousness" Tanya, and tempter Damian, according to the laws of the ring composition closing the vicious circle. He will have to do what he did all his life-row. And there, where "no one has swum up yet."
Pelevin always leaves behind more questions than answers. However, this time the reader is waiting for a surprise. He is prompted by a rather specific answer to the riddle of the world scale - "what is happiness".
It turns out that everyone has their own happiness. One to achieve this state needs the truth, the other - its absence. The third will be lucky enough to find happiness in themselves, well, someone with bitterness will understand that happiness is an illusion and self-deception: "You are this. This too shall pass".