SuzanneRating:
Review
What was it like for the people in Sarajevo who experienced one of the longest sieges in modern warfare? When leaving your home for food or water meant risking get shot by one of the snipers on the hills surrounding the city? This is one imagined account of the daily lives and thoughts of three people during that war. Arrow, a woman in her twenties who’s an extraordinarily talented shot, is working as a counter-sniper for the defense forces and is becoming numb. Dragan, who sent his wife and children out of the city before it was too late, is one of the few civilians left who is still employed. Every day he walks to and from work is like Russian roulette. Kenan, unemployed, still has his family with him, and has to cross the city every few days to carry heavy jugs of water back for them. Each is anxiously aware that there is nothing logical to help them decide when to risk crossing an open intersection. Each knows that chance alone has left them alive while others have been shot – an awareness that gnaws at the edges of their consciousness. The subtleties of how each one deals with living in a city in ruins, with no infrastructure, where everyone is in hiding in fear for their lives drew me in to the story. They’ve gotten so unused to seeing or hearing from any acquaintances that they’ve become resistant to socializing in the most basic ways, as a kind of unconscious defense mechanism. All of them struggle to not let the hatred of their enemy turn them into people they don’t want to be. I liked it.
Best Lines:
“Because civilization isn’t a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, recreated daily.” (pg. 216)
KimRating:
Review
Set during the 1990s Siege of Sarajevo, this fictionalized story not only belongs to the cellist referred to in the book’s title, but to Kenan, a middle-aged husband and father of three who fights the good fight for a basic need – water. Bakery worker Dragan risks his life by leaving his apartment even on his days off, just so he may escape his oppressive living conditions. Arrow is a sniper for the good guys, or so she thinks until her commander is killed and she is re-assigned. All three know of, or have seen the cellist, a man who has vowed to play his cello everyday for 22 days to honor the 22 people he saw die from a mortar attack as they stood in line to buy bread. Though they never meet, all three are drawn in together by the man and his music. I liked this story, mostly because I found the characters to be very different, yet all had the common goal of surviving the siege in their hometown so they may be there to help rebuild the city they love.
Best Line:
“It’s just something you do because life is a series of tiny, unavoidable decisions.”
