Book: The Cellist of Sarajevo

I learned about The Cellist of Sarajevo this summer during an AP workshop as I was looking to expand my repertoire of authors to use in my World Literature class. Canadian Steven Galloway's novel dealing with the siege of Sarajevo seemed like an interesting candidate, what with its multiple perspectives and fascinating central conceit: a mortar destroys a marketplace, killing twenty-two people. In mourning for them, and because he does not know what else to do, a cellist plays Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor on the bombsite everyday for twenty-two days. Remarkably, this story is based on real Sarajevo Philharmonic cellist Vedran Smailovic, who really did play his cello in the ruins of Sarajevo (though according to Wikipedia, he is not too happy with the book's borrowing of his story, even though the author fictionalized much of it).

He doesn't have too much to worry about, though, as Smailovic is really not the focus of the book. Instead, the book alternates between the stories of three characters: Kenan, a man attempting to get water for his family and an elderly neighbor; Dragan, another man walking through the city in search of bread and food; and Arrow, a sniper attempting first to strike terror into the hearts of the "men in the hills" who are besieging the city, and then to protect the cellist as he increasingly becomes a symbol of hope and resistance. 

This is a great book club book--in fact, I recommended it to my mother for her book club, and I think it would go over quite well. It's sentimental, well-intentioned, and overall uplifting in a "keep-hope-alive-even-when-it's-hopeless" type of way. Unfortunately, it never captured me like I hoped it would, and it's seeming complexity turns out to be a little superficial. The problem, I think, likes in the fact that Kenan and Dragan are virtually identical as characters, and both of them are far less interesting than Arrow. Partly it's because Arrow has something unique to do, while the other two seem to be on basically the exact same quest (just with different goals). I cannot understand why Galloway didn't change one of the two to provide a different perspective on the seige--a child, perhaps, or an older woman. Because the two seemed so similar, I lost track of who was who, which one had which backstory, and where they were in relation to each other. The chronology of the book also seemed a little strange to me, but that might just be because I wasn't paying attention.

That's not to say it's a bad book. At just 235 small and well-spaced pages, the novel is a very quick read, and as I said, it has a hopeful optimism to it that is encouraging. I enjoyed it all right, I just had expected to be more moved, impressed, and taken with it. 

It does make me want to seek out more novels set in the Bosnian conflict or the seige of Sarajevo. It's a chapter of history I know very little about, even though it was happening right while I was in high school. So if nothing else, I appreciate that Galloway's book is keeping such an incredible chapter of history from being forgotten. I guess that's what the cellist was trying to do as well. 

Grade: C