Windows update just told me it was installing a “Malicious Software Removal Tool.”

Gosh, I hope that the virtual hyphen is between the first two words, rather than the second.

*sigh*

(In order to better motivate myself to work on a novella that I started last year, I plan to occasionally post little excerpts, sketches, and ideas here. These may or may not wind up as part of the final work, if in fact, a final work ever is produced.)

Strutting along the antenna, twenty stories above the crashing sea, the crow was a moving painting, colored vividly by the light of the setting sun. Ruffled feathers, glittering eye, he was an agitated study in deep charcoal, cobalt blues, and oil-slick opalescence.

On many a day, this crow might be found here, admiring himself, studying his fine reflection in the glass of the control system dials. Or he might be frolicking in the stiff updraft of the winds rushing over the seawall, or croaking out territorial challenges, or flirting, soaring low over the rookeries, or talking history with the murder, recounting the histories of the surrounding places (histories that generally revolved around the memories of particularly fine scavenging). But not today.

The others were keeping distant. Earlier, they had fluttered away upon his approach. The crow paced, turned to peck at the itch of a mite. The morning, so recent, was a muddled confusion. Now images, fragmentary and alien, flashed into his thoughts. He contemplated briefly a sudden, unbroken dive down to the sea-rocks, shattering amidst the ruins of this waning day.

Words formed. Words that were unfamiliar, but their meaning was clear.

The crow didn’t dive. He didn’t look at his reflection in the machinery of the pumping station. He knew what he would see. He’d seen the glint of metal on the back of crows’ heads before.

He knew that he had been split apart from the murder forever.

Rohinton Mistry, McClelland and Stewart, 1995.

Looks like I’m keeping to the theme of literature about grief, suffering, religious violence, and terrible situations here.

A Fine Balance is the interwoven story of four major characters and a handful of secondary characters, all trying to survive in an unnamed city that is almost certainly Mumbai. These characters, a widow trying to live an independent life in the city, a college student who pines for his home and life in a Himalayan hill station, and two chamaar “untouchable” villagers who have become tailors, all end up living together for a brief time in an apartment in the city against the backdrop of military law.

Mistry is a very good writer, and he creates an engaging storyline that shows the continuous struggles of life in India, whether an internal struggle (as in the case of Maneck), a financial struggle (Dina), or a struggle with roles dictated by tradition (Dina, Ishvar, and Om). The struggles continue in the face of overwhelming bureaucratic apathy, caste warfare, exploitive companions, official corruption, grinding poverty, religious conflict, and common thugs — yet, the continuation of the struggle is fueled by the will to survive, all-too-rare acts of kindness, and the finest gossamer strands of hope.

My only criticism would be that the various plots of the book revolve around a large number of improbable coincidences involving meetings of people. In a country of a billion people, having the same few individuals repeatedly running into one another in disparate locations felt a little forced. Obviously, fiction is fiction, and Mistry is interested in making some strong points about power, corruption, cruelty, and kindness, and by giving us characters we know, the situations gain that much more power. Still, he manages with a remarkably light touch in places (the Sikh cab driver when Maneck returns, for example), where we feel an individual’s plight when we scarcely know a thing about them. This is especially true in contrast to the many appearances and reappearances of Rajaram the hair-collector or the Monkey Man.

1. I got in trouble trying to buy an assortment of walnuts, almonds, filberts, etc, with their shells intact. I asked for “unshelled nuts,” and was roundly mocked by the grocery store concierge (serves me right, going to a grocery store that has a concierge. What ever happened to the good old grocery store information counter? Or grocer, for that matter?).

Now, to be fair, the concierge may not have spoken English as her first language. But seeing as you shell a nut to remove its shell, it seems to me that unshelled means remaining in the shell. I take it as one of the many delightful perversions that make up the English language, that a shelled nut has no shell, but an unshelled nut does. Evidently, though, the only online dictionary to include “unshelled” as an adjective, Princeton’s WordNet, disagrees with me.

2. Late last night, after many of the revelers had left, Peter noticed two new visitors coming to celebrate the arrival of Autumn. Two fairly large raccoons were nosing about on the deck. One was coming up to the screen door, possibly hoping to come inside and partake of an autumn repast. The other was inspecting the cooler, perhaps hoping to sample some Cyser or pumpkin ale. I chased them off, but their departing attitude was one of “whatever dude. But you might as well get over it, ’cause we’ll be coming back.”

3. On my weary walk to work this morning, I was nearly bowled off the sidewalk by a crow/red-tail hawk dogfight. This time, it was a single crow on the tail of a single hawk, and they were swooping and rolling and skimming between the branches. Man, can those guys maneuver.

Erin Vincent, Delacort Press, 2007.

Say you’re fourteen years old, and your parents are involved in an accident. Your mother is killed instantly, and your father is severely injured. A month later, your father succumbs to his injuries. You, your older sister, and your toddler brother, now need to strike out on your own. Along the way, you deal with unsympathetic family friends, thieving relatives, insensitive news reporters, nattering classmates, questionable school counselors, predators of many stripes, and, thankfully, a few helpful friends and neighbors.

Vincent writes her true story in the frank, direct voice of her fourteen year old self. She not only describes her navigation of the emotional rapids, but also gives honest voice to the thoughts and feelings that one is not “supposed” to have. She includes enough humor to get the reader through the experience, although she made me cry several times before she was done.

Unlike most books billed as “uplifting,” Vincent’s doesn’t end with a triumphant epiphany, or a blazing message of hope for all humanity. There is a accomplishment, a victory of sorts, but it’s a much shakier, more human: an emerging-from-the-crucible kind of victory. There really is a message of hope for humanity there, but it’s not writ large, nor accompanied by the swelling of the orchestra. The message is much quieter. People experience terrible things. And people can, and do survive them, but it’s not easy and there are no guarantees.