A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

This was a book loaned to Pocket of Bolts by one of his colleagues. Unsurprisingly, given my current obsessive greediness for reading material, I got at it first. This was two months ago now, and Pocket of Bolts still hasn't read it! Of course, I am so behind in my book draft that I finished the book back when it was still summer and now it is fall and I am only just writing about it... oh well.

It was an interesting book. I never would have chosen it myself. It was about India under Indira Gandhi, basically set around the time I was born (mid-70s). It tells the stories of coincidentally interacting lives: the major characters are two lower caste tailors, a widow, and a young college student who grew up in the mountains. Interesting minor characters also abound, however: the hair-collector, the rent-collector, the Muslim who teaches the tailors their work, the Beggar-master, the widow's arrogant and controlling brother, the proof-reader, the college student's lost friend... Each person's story is given in elaborate detail, and the stories all wind round and round each other.

The plot, which reminds me very much of a pattern seen in traditional Chinese novels, is one of coming together followed by dispersal. Each little episode furthers the story, and most of them add to the characters' suffering. The "fine balance" of the title refers to the ability to a balance between tragedy and redemption. There is a considerable amount of tragedy in the book, tragedies of every kind, but there is just enough redemption that you come away not quite all the way crushed.