The Cellist of Sarajevo

We have famously short-term memories as a culture. This is why political ads work so well. We forget that it was the other guy that put us where we are today. But being stupid about the recent past isn't supposed to apply to me so it was with increasing embarrassment that realized how little I remembered about the Bosnian conflict as I devoured Steven Galloway's excellent book, The Cellist of Sarajevo.

Galloway himself admits his book isn't thoroughly accurate and the reader is left with little information about the conflict or its roots. What he offers instead is a profound look at life in a modern war zone. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't reading about WWII and that I had watched some of this on television, in a very recent lifetime.

The book is divided by point of view. We are introduced first to the cellist, a man finally so devastated by the senseless killing around him that he vows to play Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor for 22 days straight at the site of the most recent massacre. Galloway bases this character on a real person so you get a whiff of authenticiy. As the cellist begins his vigil, we are introduced to three other characters-Kenan, a father and husband just trying to get drinkable water to his family (an odyssey in his wartorn city), Dragan, a pensioner, trying to get his daily bread (literally), and Arrow, the sniper recruited by the "defenders" of Sarajevo to take out the "aggressor" snipers targeting civilians throughout the streets. Each chapter begins with one of these characters highlighted while the other names recede into a grey type. I loved this detail, even though it wasn't that difficult to keep the characters apart, a real gift from an author. The visual was just a nice way to begin a chapter.

After months of watching their beloved and beautiful city become ruins--a city hitherto best known for its role in the start of WWI--it comes down to this: Each character daily weighs what might keep him or her alive. If you're dressed as a penguin, is a sniper more or less likely to choose you as target? Kenan contemplates this very thought as he runs with his water canisters strapped to his back, Do the men on the hills tend to shoot at people they find funny, or spare them? If the person who crosses the intersection before you is killed, do you stand a better or worse chance of making it across? What if the sniper misses? Is he having a bad day, or is he playing with you? And, in the Arrow the sniper's case, she wonders, is she a killer or a defender? And what is she defending, exactly? In the end, the character of Dragan phrases it this way: Is the real Sarajevo the one where people were happy, treated each other well, lived without conflict? Or is the real Sarajevo the one he sees today, where people are trying to kill each other, where bullets and bombs fly down from hills and the buildings crumble to the ground?

Author Galloway begs his characters to find and keep their humanity while their lives have become little more than those of scurrying rats. The few animals--dogs mostly--who appear all seem strangely more settled by this new world of danger, while the humans themselves are regressing. The question is, will one cellist's work and stubborness be enough to remind them all of where they've come and who they truly are? And will we the readers pay attention long enough to remember that humanity exists even under the most savage conditions.

The Imperfectionists

It turns out that if it takes me more than a week to read a (relatively short) book, there's a good chance I'm not enjoying that book. Sadly, that's what's been holding me up. I was stuck reading Talking to Girls about Duran Duran. I thought I would love that. I mean, DURAN DURAN! I wasn't as crazy a fan as friend Heather in junior high, but I had all the posters on the wall and in my locker that my meager allowance offered. Plus, it promised to be a pleasant romp through memory lane of that 80s music that more or less formed me. Turns out, not so much. Just couldn't get into it.

Enough about badness and on to the book that I devoured in two days: Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists. The story is told by different characters, all working at an international newspaper based in Rome. Each story is a little bit depressing, but it's all set in Rome so you're willing to put up with a bit of dissatisfaction on the part of the characters because you can't beat the gig. That's pretty much how they feel about their lives, too. One character even realizes that the reason he's with his younger, very attractive girlfriend is that he can offer her a nice apartment in Rome in which she can sit around. He says he can't imagine she'd give him the time of day in a cheap apartment in Boston, for example. As difficult as their jobs might (or might not) be, each character seems to realize the luck or the allure of their current positions, even as they angle to do more than say, write obituaries. Each character has a sad little experience or awakening, even if it's not as tragic as the one that befalls the obituary writer, Arthur Gopal, and each story is neatly turns us back to the office.

My favorite character is probably Herman Cohen, partly because his awakening is more positive than some of the others and partly because he's chief copy editor who's internal publication (called Why?) collects all the misspellings and errors made by the writers over the week. I relish that little detail and can relate to it while being grateful that I don't work with such a nitpicker myself.

I did skip one chapter, the one on Winston Cheung, the Cairo stringer, because I could sense it was going to be the sort of chapter that would haunt me, leave me feeling sorry and responsible for this young man's failures. I'm sure it's good, but it's not for me. The revenge chapter towards the end was brutal but kind of fitting, and one I'm sure a lot of randomly down-sized employees could enjoy. I did kind of regret that there wasn't some big bringing together everyone chapter at the end, though there is closure, of sorts. I was just left wanting a little more.

The book is really a collection of glimpses into the slow decline of newspapers in general, but it's a nice little ride. It reminded me a bit of season 5 of HBO' s The Wire, the one that focused on the newspaper in which you got all the personalities, the grasping aspirations of the individual journalists, their realization that they cannot transform lives or their city merely through print, and finally, the end of the newspaper as they know it. That was one of The Wire's strongest seasons, and Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists, follows a similar path, in a very different manner. And in spite of the negatives, it still made me dream of living abroad and writing for a living. Just maybe with a bit less personal drama and fewer things going wrong.

The Information Officer

Apparently I'm reading about small islands in the Mediterranean, specifically during wartime. In the wake of Sadie Jones' Small Wars, I picked up Mark Mills' The Information Officer which taught me a lot about Malta, a country I'm not sure I could have placed with any degree of confidence just a week ago. This is a different war and different place from Smith's Cyprus novel. Also it was a different style and genre.

As if the story of a small island being bombed to bits (in spite of the Maltese and their "indominable spirit") during WWII didn't offer enough drama, Mills drops in a couple of murders, a psychopath, and hints of secret and secretive agents. In some ways I liked that the war was "just" a backdrop to every day matters (such as murder) because it fit along with the image we have of Malta, a country that has apparently resisted one onslaught after another. The Germans are the current attackers in this book, along with the apparently half-hearted Italian neighbors, but it's also (as in Smith's Cyprus) the British presence that is causing some of the trouble.

As in any mystery, I became extremely paranoid about every character, including the protagonist, Max, who is the titular propagandist for the British. He's a nice character and interesting in a dull, heroic way, but no one was safe from my suspicions once "sherry girls" start getting murdered. In a mystery, it can go one of two ways. Either it's the obvious bad guy and it's just a matter of why and how, or it's out in left field, a sort of the-butler-did-it scenario. If you're lucky, the author brings you along for the ride whichever way he or she chooses to go. I wasn't totally satisfied with the killer in The Information Officer. I suppose authors who choose to "surprise" you almost have to write the early chapters as if they have no idea who the killer is, but then it's hard to accept the result. I guess I like hints, though Mills is decent enough at red herrings--as I said, I became suspicious of everyone--but I'm not sure I'm convinced by the results.

Still, The Information Officer was a good glimpse into a country I knew nothing about, a good example of life in wartime, and the writing was good so I'd probably read another book by the author.