A Minor Exorcism
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About the Story
A solitary piano tuner is called to mend a community grand whose nightly music comforts neighbors but leaves one woman ill. After a risky live tuning, Eli devises and installs a subtle mechanical solution and negotiates a barter-based role with the neighborhood. The story follows the domestic textures of city life—bakeries, pickled-cucumber stalls, a stubborn laundromat hum—alongside hands-on repair, teaching, and the small absurdities of a ghostly vaudevillian who insists on biscuits.
Chapters
Story Insight
A Minor Exorcism centers on Eli Navarro, a meticulous piano tuner whose practical skill becomes the hinge of a small neighborhood's supernatural surprise. When a community grand begins playing itself each night—courteous, vaudevillian, and oddly fond of leaving biscuits on the music rack—the concerts bind people together even as one regular listener begins collapsing after the performances. June Park, the community organizer, wants the music to continue; Mrs. Weller, the elder who suffers, needs it to stop hurting her. Eli arrives to do his job: to listen, to measure, and to find what in the instrument’s body is doing harm. The conflict that follows is not cast as a mystery of occult truth but as a practical moral puzzle: silence a source of wonder, or alter the machine so it can sing safely. The stakes are human and immediate—friendship and habit, bodily safety and public joy—rather than cosmic revelation. The novel treats a trade with respect. Tuning techniques and workshop details appear with an insider’s eye—micro-interval adjustments, the insertion of felt dampers, re-voicing of hammers, judicious bracing of soundboard ribs, and the use of contact microphones and spectrum analysis to map sympathetic clusters. Those technical specifics serve more than verisimilitude: they structure the plot. The decisive moments play out as hands-on interventions, not metaphysical confessions. That practical focus dovetails with a gentle, precise humor—an imaginary vaudevillian (Percy Finch) who insists on applause and biscuits, Hector’s ceremonial spoon percussion, and a neighborhood ritual of a tiny two-note fanfare at 9:03 a.m.—which keeps the supernatural tender and odd rather than menacing. Domestic textures anchor the story everywhere: bakery glaze on fingers, pickled-cucumber stalls on the square, a laundromat dryer with a stubborn hum. Those background details make the setting feel lived-in and give the drama a civic, communal scale. Tonal balance is a major strength: the prose is tactile and unromantic about labor, warmly comic about people, and careful about the uncanny. The emotional arc moves from professional detachment toward steady connection; solitude is eased by barter systems (buns for labor), shared watchfulness, and the slow work of maintenance. Pivotal scenes are staged as live technical procedures—risky, precise, and physically demanding—so the climax depends on craft and timing rather than a sudden revelation. For readers drawn to quiet supernatural stories that reward attention to how things are made and mended, this is a thoughtful, humane read. The narrative will appeal to those who enjoy close, sensory storytelling, modest stakes with real human consequences, and a wry sense of the absurd threaded through everyday community life.
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Frequently Asked Questions about A Minor Exorcism
What is A Minor Exorcism about ?
A Minor Exorcism follows Eli Navarro, a solitary piano tuner hired to investigate a community grand that plays itself nightly. He must fix the piano’s harmful resonance through hands-on repairs while the neighborhood balances wonder and safety.
Who is Eli Navarro and why does his profession matter in the story ?
Eli is a skilled piano tuner and technician. His trade is central: the plot hinges on practical tuning methods—felt dampers, retuning, bracing—so the resolution depends on his craft, not magical exposition.
Is the piano’s haunting dangerous or merely whimsical ?
The haunting is oddly whimsical yet physically harmful: its music comforts neighbors but causes a regular listener to faint. The threat is acoustic and mechanical, requiring technical mitigation rather than exorcism.
Does the climax depend on Eli’s tuning skills rather than a supernatural revelation ?
Yes. The climax resolves through a risky live tuning—micro-retuning, micro-dampers and a soundboard brace. Eli’s professional actions neutralize the damaging resonance, showing craft over revelation.
How is the community portrayed and what role do they play in the story ?
The community is vivid and collaborative: bakers, volunteers, a laundromat hum, and a vaudevillian ghost. They barter goods, volunteer, and care for one another, making the social fabric essential to the solution.
What tone and small absurd details does the story include ?
Expect warm, tactile tone with gentle humor: a biscuit-obsessed ghost, a man who taps rhythm on a tin, a two-note morning fanfare, pickled-cucumber stalls, and mundane rituals that humanize the supernatural.
Ratings
I loved the dexterity of the language and how the supernatural is refracted through the lens of craft. 'A Minor Exorcism' treats repair as a kind of liturgy: Eli approaches a misbehaving instrument the way a priest might approach a parishioner — with patience, tools, and the humility of someone who knows instruments have their own wills. The narrative pays attention to the texture of everyday city life (the bakery line, pickles, lemon polish) so that the intrusion of the ghostly is neither flashy nor gratuitous but woven into a communal routine. The live tuning scene is beautifully rendered; you can feel the tension in Eli's hands as much as in the room's air. Equally strong are the quieter negotiations afterwards — arranging a barter-based role for himself is both realistic and morally satisfying. It refuses the trope of the solitary savior and replaces it with reciprocal labor: bread for tuning, teaching for companionship. If there is a critique, it's small: I hungered for a longer epilogue showing how the neighborhood changed with the arrangement. Still, this is a tender, smart story about how people and objects mend one another — and how repair can be an act of community-making. Highly recommended for readers who like their supernatural served with domestic detail and wit.
This was arms-around-you cozy with a sly wink. I chuckled out loud at the idea of a vaudevillian ghost who insists on biscuits — that image alone makes this worth the read. Eli's world is tactile and delicious: the saffron-citrus vendor, the laundromat drone, the paper plate with three ginger biscuits waiting like an offering. Dot the cat is a star in two sentences. But it's not just cute. There's warmth and quiet ethics here: Eli doesn't grandstand; he tunes, teaches, and trades his way into the neighborhood's life. The moment when June mentions Mrs. Weller fainting felt unexpectedly heavy and grounded the story's stakes. Short, funny, and oddly tender. Felt like a late-night radio play for neighbors — comforting, practiced, and a tiny bit mysterious. 😊
The premise sounded promising — a tuner, a haunted piano, neighborhood life — but the execution left me a bit frustrated. Pacing is uneven: the opening delights in small, tactile images, but when the supernatural element is supposed to escalate, things pull back into domestic banality instead of leaping forward. The risky live tuning felt undercut by how quickly Eli devises a clean mechanical fix; I wanted to see him struggle with the technical details or the town's resistance, not resolve everything with a neat barter. There are also some logic gaps. How exactly does his 'subtle mechanical solution' address the ghostly illness? The story suggests mechanics where metaphysics might belong, but then fails to commit to either. The barter arrangement is heartwarming on paper, yet it arrives as a tidy moral conclusion rather than a consequence of tense negotiation. Nice writing in places, but I wanted either more uncanny threat or deeper craft detail — this sits in an unsatisfying middle.
A thoughtful, craft-forward little piece. What I appreciated most was how the supernatural element is woven into the quotidian: the piano's nightly music comforts neighbors yet literally makes one person ill, and the resolution emerges from skilled tinkering rather than exorcism-by-spectacle. Eli is presented not as a mystical fixer but as a tradesman who knows soundboards and human rhythms; that made the ending — where he negotiates a barter-based place in the neighborhood — feel earned. The prose leans on sensory specificity: chestnuts, lemon polish, the bakery sign, a boy skidding on his bike. Those details ground the more whimsical moments (the vaudevillian ghost's biscuits) so the humor never undercuts the sympathy. I also liked how teaching and repair become forms of social glue: the way Eli shows someone a tuning trick or swaps labor for bread suggests different economies of care. If the story has a flaw, it's occasional brevity in character arcs — I wanted a little more on Mrs. Weller and June — but the piece's intimate scale is also one of its strengths. A quiet, humane supernatural about workmanship and neighborhood life.
I wanted to like this more than I did. The setting is cozy and the little details — pickled-cucumber stalls, the laundromat hum — are nice, but the plot smoothed over too neatly for my taste. The ghost who insists on biscuits borders on gimmicky; it’s cute the first time, but the story never really deepens the haunting into anything threatening or genuinely strange. Eli’s mechanical solution is clever on the page, but it's sketched rather than explained. I kept waiting for a technical or emotional snag that would complicate things, and it never came. The barter ending (Eli trades his skills for community favors) feels predictable and a little too neat — like an indie movie wrapping up with everyone hugging on the porch. If you want gentle neighborhood supernatural vibes, this is fine. If you wanted real tension, look elsewhere.
This story hit me like the sudden warmth of a bakery oven on a cold night. Eli is such an honest, quietly stubborn protagonist — I loved the image of him hauling his toolbox up the cracked steps and Dot perched like a thermostat. The author does small-scenes so well: the saffron-citrus stall, the laundromat's persistent hum, and that paper plate with three ginger biscuits (so weird and perfect). The live tuning scene is tense in a way I didn't expect — the risk felt real, and the ghost's vaudevillian insistence on biscuits added a tender, absurd note that made me smile and feel a little melancholy at the same time. The barter-based resolution is satisfying because it honors community rather than heroics; Eli negotiating a role for himself feels plausible and humane. A lovely, domestic supernatural: funny, warm, and full of repair-focused detail. I wanted more of June and the neighbors' backstories, but honestly, the story's smallness is part of its charm.