Galloway, Steven: The Cellist of Sarajevo
The Cellist of Sarajevo (2008)
Written by: Steven Galloway
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 235
Disclaimer: free from publisher via LibaryThing's Early Reviwer's Program
So let me just pimp a little: if you're on LibraryThing but you aren't participating in the Early Reviewers program, you're missing out. Every month, they have hundreds of copies of books to give away and all you have to do is click a button to request said book you want, and essentially, they draw your name out of the hat and will send your info to the publishers if you win one of those review copies. And those copies aren't always advanced reader copies either, but real, physical copies of the books. I've won at least half a dozen: it's a really, really cool way to learn about books you would've never heard of otherwise and what's more, it's FREE. Completely and totally free. What's not to love?
The pimpage is because Galloway's The Cellist at Sarajevo is one such book. I snagged it off LibraryThing, the publisher sent me the actual trade copy, which was so cute and small I decided to read it right away. The reason I even requested the book was because the title caught my eye (you can thank my classical music background), and the premise did too.
The premise: after a mortar attack that killed twenty-two people waiting in line for bread in Sarajevo, a cellist decides to play Albinoni's Adagio at the center of the site for twenty-two days straight. A true story, but the characters who are affected by this event are fictional: a father, a bakery worker, and a young sniper--a woman at that. Each of their tales interlace with that of the cellist, and it's the cellist and his music who gives them the strength to make some of the most important decisions of their lives.
I'm not going to bother with a cut for this review, as there's really no spoilers and I want to keep this review short and sweet. Technically speaking, the book is divided into parts, and each chapter focuses on the character of Arrow, the sniper; Kenan, the bakery worker; and Dragan, the father. We only get the POV of the cellist once, and that's to illustrate the inciting incident, the mortar shell hitting the bread line, which the cellist witnesses and therefore decides that he will honor those fallen with the adagio, once a day for each person killed. From that point on, the narrative time is a little tricky, but you don't notice it while reading because of the present tense of the narrative. Arrow's story takes place over a matter of days, but it's woven with the chapters of Kenan and Dragan, whose stories take place in a SINGLE day and focus on a SINGLE event, but are broken up over the course of the whole book. It's actually not all that jarring, because the present tense has a way of both distancing the reader and creating a dream-like atmosphere, so once you REALIZE that narrative time is not at all linear, you really don't care because the truth is, it doesn't matter. If the book illustrates anything, it's the mundane horror of war, how every day brings the same terrors and the same fears and all of that, day after day, becomes something familiar, something mundane, and it's that very notion that each character must confront with each of their stories: how has the war affected them, and how will they let the war affect them from this point on (and the point being the experience of the cellist playing the same song at the same time every day for twenty-two days)?
It's not a book that will wow you with the beauty of its prose. It's not stark, it's not beautiful, it's just somewhere in between. It paints a picture and almost lulls you into the same stupor so many of the characters are feeling. It's an interesting feeling, because for me, I knew little to nothing about the war in Sarajevo, so I looked it up while reading this book. What I learned makes the book a little more poignant, because the war seemed so pointless, and that's something the characters struggle with: why is their beautiful city under siege? Why do the soldiers in the hills hate them so much to pick them off like rabbits? Why do their own people find ways to profit from this war and make the rest of the city suffer and starve?
Big questions, but really, there's no answers save for the personal decisions that Arrow, Kenan, and Dragan make by the end of the book, and that, if anything, is the most enlightening element. The cellist is a symbol, just like his song is a symbol, of perseverance and hope and what it means to survive, what it means to still have beauty in such an ugly world. I think of all the stories, Arrow's is the most dramatic, probably because of her position (a sniper, yo, and a good one at that) as well as the fact her story has more of an arc, whereas Kenan and Dragan are simply struggling to accomplish a SINGLE task, but that task is fraught with terror and peril and provides them with no guarantees they'll make it home alive.
My Rating
Glad It Was Free: (new review category!!!) it's a good book, a quiet read, and a somewhat poignant one (in fact, I have the urge to seek out that particular adagio on iTunes so I can hear what it sounds like), but it's not a book that I fell in love with, or even salivated enough over to keep on the shelf for a future reading. I read it, I liked it, and I'm done. Would I recommend it? Probably, if something triggered my memory of having READ the book, and perhaps that's the book's greatest flaw: for its underlying message and moments of poignancy, it's an unfortunately forgettable book. There were things that distracted me, as I had trouble truly visualizing the city and needed to seek out pictures on the internet in order to really SEE what these people were living with day-in and day-out, and the pictures I did see made me wonder why the author didn't describe certain elements in more detail.
Cover Commentary: the cover for the trade, which is the edition I have, is certainly nice and eye-catching, but there's something about the coloration that's too bright and cheerful, and I have to really look hard at the buildings in the background to notice they're war-torn. The hardback cover, on the other hand, is stark and perfect in its coloration, and if I had a choice, I'd prefer to have the cover art on the hardback.
Next Up:
No clue. You know what I'm still picking at, so I'm not going to keep reminding you. :)