The Cellist of Sarajevo [Paperback]

The cello, with its wonderfully rich and mellow tones, has to be one of my favourite instruments, so I was immediately drawn to this book. For a long time, though, I resisted reading it, fearing that war-torn Sarajevo would be a harrowing and morbid subject. Instead the book provided a riveting insight into the daily struggles of ordinary people caught up in a situation over which they have no control.

I hadn't realised until I read the author's Afterword that the idea for the story, itself entirely fictional, came from a true-life situation. A cellist sits at the same spot in a bombed street at the same time every day for 22 days and plays Albinoni's haunting Adagio in honour of the 22 people killed there by mortar shells while waiting to buy bread. It's a dangerous memorial - the cellist is, literally, a sitting target for snipers.

The book isn't about the cellist himself, though. It's about the inspiration and hope his music conveys to people caught up in a daily struggle to live and stay alive, as well as the tragic waste that inevitably comes with war. In many ways, this is less a novel, more a snapshot of the lives of three individuals during those 22 days. As they watch their beloved city crumble around them, services we take for granted like electricity and running water become so unreliable as to exist only in the memory, and obtaining food and fresh water becomes a matter of life and death.

Throughout the book the novelist concentrates on Kenan's efforts to carry sufficient water to last a week, both for his family and for an irascible old woman who lives downstairs and to whom he feels an obligation even though he doesn't like her. In the case of Dragan, an older man who managed to get his wife and son to Italy before the siege began, the author details his efforts to reach the bakery where he has worked for forty years. He counts himself lucky to have a job in a city where so many are unemployed, and although not paid in cash, which is virtually worthless, he receives his wages in the form of bread to take home. Lastly there is Arrow, an outstanding counter-sniper tasked with keeping the cellist alive, and in many ways her story is the most compelling.

A little of the past lives of the characters is revealed through occasional flashbacks, as they mourn the lives they used to live, when the city was `normal' and before the siege became the new normality.

For some, the book may seem fragmented as it switches from one character to the next but I didn't find it so. The book is well written, and the use of the present tense conveys a sense of immediacy, of being there with the characters, a part of their stories. To say I enjoyed reading it sounds inappropriate for such a subject, but I couldn't think of another verb that was any better. I could certainly have gone on reading about these people for much longer, which must be the ultimate test of a good read.

I think the hype around this book hasn't done it many favours - I was expecting something big and profound, which turns out is not what this book delivers. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is certainly understated and `quiet' if you get my meaning. Perhaps the author chose this tone because he is writing about normal people who are trying to carry on with their normal life as their city is under siege. They are easy to identify with, which brings their actions and behaviour very close to your own understanding - There are few heroic actions that do not ring true, and the omnipresent narration lets us know what they are thinking, thus showing us their sometimes painful weaknesses. It is a sensitive story very much focussed on the internal world of a few of the citizens of Sarajevo.

But I was expecting to be moved more than I was. I think the narration was too simple to wake any real emotion in me. The Cellist makes an important gesture, but it isn't described with enough size or intensity. I found the same with Arrow, the female sniper - Her story could have been so involving and intense, but it didn't quite get there. There is no doubt that Steven Galloway has given serious thought to how the human psychology functions under such terrible conditions, and has researched his topic thoroughly. I was just expecting a little more impact, because undoubtedly his topic has plenty of scope for it. He's just not found it.

I can't help wondering whether this book should have been written by someone who was there. I can remember the siege of Sarajevo, it is so recent that the characters he describes could easily be alive today. It seems such a wasted opportunity when the impact is so obviously missing - The story has all the necessary elements to make this book harrowing, moving, emotional and beautiful, and someone who was there at the time would be able to do it. I found it even more frustrating because a couple of times he writes beautifully - His description of a bomb falling at the very beginning took my breath away, for example. But most of it stayed unengaging and bland.

This represented an intriguing read which is full of useful anecdotes and reminders of what it was like to be faced with sniper fire during the four year siege of this famous and celebrated city of culture, Sarajevo. The focal point of the plot is taken from the angle of three central characters which had to endure the trauma of civil war and the loss of any normality and humanity in their beloved city. The key characters are dragan, Kennan and arrow. Arrow (the sniper code-name and female) is chosen to protect the cellist from sniper fire at all costs and act therefore as a counter-sniper, thus protecting her own sense of culture and humanity in the midst of chaos. However, Kennan and dragan are different. Through their mundane experiences, such as collecting water at the other end of the city, a parallel sub-plot emerges where Galloway can comment on the trauma, uncertainty, tragedy and slaughter people had to endure in order to complete basic tasks. Both Kennan and Dragan question the meaning of their existence and the fragility of their lives as the loss of friends, via the snipers, becomes ritualised and normalised. You truly experience how hard it was for people in Yugoslavia to maintain any sense of shock when ritualised murder of innocents was so common in the 1990s. The plot thickens at the end when Galloway hangs this sense of wonder and curiosity in the plot around the cellist and arrow. The question of whether the cellist will survive from the onslaught of the snipers and be protected by arrow becomes the integral theme. An interesting read. However, a key criticism of the novel was the fact that characters are not fully developed and the ending is rather flat when you consider the build up of tension prior to the finale.