The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

One of the best things about being an English major is that most of my time is spent reading books. A good portion of my peers would not agree with this sentiment, but most of them find themselves hating the books they read. I’m not sure if it is just good luck or an open mind on my part, but I have yet to come across this problem. Oh yes, there have been books that I do not particularly like because of the subject matter or the writing style or the message, but in each of those books I find something else to like, something to take away from it and through which to enjoy the experience. Mostly, though, the books I read I enjoy fully.

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway was one of these books.

First, some background material. This book was written by a Canadian author based around the siege of Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the city was a man, Vedran Smailović, who, before the siege, was the cellist for the Sarajevo String Quartet. After a bomb hit the line of people waiting to by bread at 10:00 a.m. one day, he played Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor as an homage for the 22 people who died. He was also known to play at funerals, despite the fact that they were major targets for the enemy to snipe or bomb. Smailović is not a big fan of Galloway’s book, though Galloway only used him as a peripheral character.

Largely, the book is about a siege of a city, and what it does to its people.

It centers around three characters: Arrow, a sniper who when it comes down to it suffers from an dissociated identity crisis brought on by the war and her job; Kenan, a father struggling to survive and keep his family safe; and Dragan, a bakery worker whose family got out safe while he stayed behind for his job and to keep their apartment safe. There are four parts to this book, and it cycles through each of these three character’s points of views, all centered around the siege and the cellist in some way.

Galloway, for all his limitations as someone who has never been to war and never experienced being held captive in his own home, does what I believe is a brilliant job of playing people heavily effected by these things. I can feel Arrow’s frustration with what she has become and what she must do; I want to just curl up and cry with Dragan as he tries to not think about the Sarajevo of his memory because he knows it will be ruined with the Sarajevo of today. The emotions are raw, and they are real, and Galloway uses the active voice by staying away from to be verbs to engage the reader in something s/he probably has not experienced before.

I will be the first to admit that I felt rather bored with Dragan and Kenan’s bits after reading Arrow’s part, but I’m a sucker for hardcore heroines. I’m also a sucker for intense action, even if that action is more in the mind and subtle tension than it is in actual movement, and Arrow has plenty of that in her bits. It is not Dragan and Kenan’s fault, nor is it Galloway’s (well, maybe a little Galloway’s – he could have made a less awesome sniper or a more awesome baker). It is just how it is. Dragan and Kenan’s parts were more depressing than anything else, and the raw emotion of it unhindered by a tough wall is rather difficult to get through. Dragan can only be described as incredibly awkward and a little pathetic, and Kenan is just like a little lost puppy dog who just can’t quite comprehend what has happened. The realistic nature of it makes it inherently difficult to push through, but it is in every way worth it because of how brilliantly and sympathetically it is written.

All in all, I give this book a solid 8.5 out of 10. And yes, I’ve decided to rate books on an arbitrary scale of my own choosing because I can. These will come to mean more when I’ve done a few.

~lmmixer

Dear WordPress, today I fell into a river and read The Hunger Games.

Yeah, that’s right. I fell into a river. Well, okay. It was really a crick, but I claim the right to call it a river for the sole reason that I fell in it. Every body of water seems bigger than it is when you fall in it. Honestly, the story itself isn’t that exciting. I was out on a photo safari so I could use up a roll of film (which I did) and I ended up under a bridge taking pictures and just stepped back too far. My heart jolted when it happened; one minute, both feet are planted firmly on the snowy ground, the next moment my left leg is diving down unnaturally. The cold paled in comparison to the intense fear I felt in that moment: That I would fall completely in; that I had just lost my footing on the earth (a terrible and real fear of mine; I can’t climb ladders or stand anywhere that might give way without having a panic attack); that I would get my camera soaked (even if it’s a film camera, I’m 99.9% certain that this would not be good). Luckily, my camera is fine, I got myself out of the river without any further damage, and it was warm enough out that I made it back to my car and then my apartment without my leg turning blue.

So that is the story of how I fell into a river today. I do not suggest anyone repeating the experience.

I also finished reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins today. It seems to be the New Big Thing, and I’ve actually been meaning to read it for a while. The problem is that I don’t have much money right now, and what I do get goes to bills, food, or photography equipment. Then, on Friday as I went to the bus stop late in the day to await a bus that would take me back to campus, I saw it there. It laid there innocently on the bench, looking thoroughly depressing in how its pages curled back due to the cold that chilled the air, and my heart went out to it, and to the person who had left it. Had they been busy? I wondered, Had they been reading and seen the bus suddenly in front of them and put the book down in a desperate attempt to find money or a bus pass and just simply forgot it there? The book had not been finished, I saw that immediately – there’s a dog-eared page (which I have left) near the end. They were a mere 50 pages from the end! So close, so intense!

And yet I took it anyways. It was left there, after all, so carelessly. (My roommate later mentioned that it was there when she was at the stop earlier, suggesting the person had never come back to look for it there.) I realize how terrible of me this seems, and believe me I struggled with the decision myself. In the end, though, I decided to take it and the guilt, at least for now. I put it in my backpack and started reading it yesterday morning. Now, I have finished. Tuesday (the next school day) I will put it back on the bench, with a note of thanks for the person who left it and allowed a fellow human to get attached to what proved to be an excellent book. It would be nice if he/she could forgive me for taking their book, but I will fully interested if he/she can’t.

(WARNING: AFTER THIS POINT, THERE ARE SPOILERS. BECAUSE THAT IS HOW I’M ROLLING HERE. IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE SPOILED, STOP READING NOW. IF YOU KEEP GOING, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO COMPLAIN.)

It was an excellent book, to be sure. The story was engaging, the main character charming in her own way and the world thoroughly fascinating. Collins did an excellent job in telling the story – well, not telling, per se. She very much shows us the story, bringing us into a world of post-America, a world of poverty and government cruelty through a series of very detailed scenes and excellent use of dialogue. Yes, that’s right: dialogue. Not usually heard in compliments of a book, but she writes dialogue very well. Every character has his/her own distinct style of talking; the narrator’s vocal voice is similar to her mental voice, but noticeably clipped, shortened, and less engaging (which is so like her). Peeta has his own voice – sweet, almost, and definitely with a strong vibe of innocence throughout the book. The dialogue made the story run so smoothly, I hardly realized when I had read half of it.

The book is not perfect, though. There were many flaws in the writing itself, though they all seem to be stylistic choices. It stays true to the narrator, anyways. In some places it still bugged me, though. Even if it was true to the narrator’s mental voice, I wanted so much for her to stop using incomplete sentences. It just got annoying and took me out of the story. Still, I kept going, wanting to know what would happen, which is the mark of a well-written story. I couldn’t put it down very easily.

I think the only thing that truly annoyed me was how Collins dealt with Peeta. I haven’t read the other two (obviously) so I will have to wait and see before I decide on him, but so far I really don’t like him. Perhaps this has to do with his name – I pronounce it phonetically, and it’s just like this terrible pizza place we have in town called Pita Pit. Worse pizza you’ll ever have, and so the name has a negative connotation from the get-go.

That’s not quite it, though. The main reason I don’t like him is because I am angry that he lived. It just didn’t seem realistic; I felt like Collins kept him alive for the story’s sake, not because he actually would have lived. Yes, I expected him to live past the first day for the story’s sake because otherwise it would not have been interesting, but I honestly thought – or maybe just desperately hoped – that he would die. Peeta is weak. There is no getting around that fact. He is weak and he should not have made it through those games – would not have, I’m sure, if not for Katniss, and even with her I feel like he just shouldn’t have survived. But he did, because he’s needed for the story.

And this utterly and completely disappointed me. I can move past it because this world has me so captivated that I can’t just stop here, but it still disappointed me. The rest of it was good, though, and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next two. I hope desperately that Katniss changes things, because her system of government frustrated me to no end. I kept finding myself going, why can’t they just say no? Why can’t the kids just go “fuck you!” and refuse to fight? If even one year the tributes acted as martyrs, the games would end or at least start to crumble, I’m sure of it; the Capitol would not want to even show it, and it might get the Districts to do something. And yet, the kids fight, year after year, killing one another because they have no choice. I’m almost certain that the guilt of it is the real reason why Haymitch drinks.

I don’t have much more to say right now, at least until I read the next two. Her style, though flawed, works well for the book, and I enjoyed almost every minute of it. The book is fast-paced, part of which is due to being excellently structured. Nothing seems like extra information; I cannot think of a single thing in this book I would take out due to being unnecessary, and that’s impressive.

So, all in all, I give this book a solid A-. (It lost points mostly for Peeta.)

That’s all I’ve got for today. Fell in a river, and The Hunger Games. Perhaps one day soon I’ll talk about my own writing.

Enjoy your blended monarchy, readers.
~lmmixer