The Cellist of Sarajevo

Thoughts on the book:
This is not a book I normally would have chosen to read, but I did enjoy it.
I was in elementary school in rural Alberta during this time, so I really had no notion about what was going on or what the seige of Sarajevo was about.

I thought it was interesting that the author never really said who “the men in the hills” were. Some how the author was able to steer pretty clear of the politics of what the war was about. Someone from the audience asked him about this. His response was in two parts. On the one hand he didn’t want to take sides in the politics o of a world he was not really apart of, and besides, the story was about the civilians and not the men in the hills. And on the other hand he felt it would be far too difficult to try to explain the politics of the war and not have that take over what he wanted the novel to be about. He has had people congratulate him for this choice, but also has received some very angry responses from people who feel that by not naming them he is protecting or removing some blame for what happened.

I felt that I really responded to Arrow’s storyline as well. She won me over in the sequence where she is reminiscing about being so in love with life that it overcame her and brought her to tears.

Another comment from the audience came from a woman who was upset that Galloway would kill Arrow’s character. And while I was a little disappointed too, I think that seemed the most appropriate ending for her. From a woman who was brought to tears my the beauty of life, to a woman who was transformed into a weapon who ended other people’s life, I don’t think that she could have returned to the person she was before the war. Certainly nobody would be the same, but in becoming a killing machine, no matter how much she tried to separate that person from her past self she could never go back to that person. And in the end I think it came down to that ultimately she didn’t believe that the longer she lived the smaller the chance became that she would be able to hang on to the person she used to be.

I also think that considering how strongly she felt about allowing somebody else to choose when she would “dive into a grave,” it was important that her character choose when the end of her life would be. If Arrow and lived, she would have had to escape the city, and I don’t think I would believe that she would abandon the city in such a way.

I especially think that it is an interesting way to show how brave she was in comparison with the other two characters who were so afraid to die -and yet how she was also more scared. Kenan and Dragan lived their lives in complete fear and struggled to survive because they were afraid to die. And yet they did also have hope that there would be something to rebuild when the war was over. Arrow decided she had to die because she had no hope that she herself could recover from the war. So she was brave in that she was not afraid to fight (in the war sense) and die, and she was too proud in a way to allow anyone else to take her life from her. And yet more scared than the other two because she couldn’t wait or believe that life could return.