Written by: Steven Galloway
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 235
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.
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.
The full review, which does NOT contain spoilers, may be found in my LJ. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome.
REVIEW: Steven Galloway's THE CELLIST AT SARAJEVO
Happy Reading!