March 28, 2008

The Cellist

Last year a friend read our pal Steve Galloway's new novel in manuscript form. When I asked for a report, this is what she told me: "Well," she paused to really think about how to phrase her response. "It's amazing." Her eyes got really big when she got to the last word, and I knew she wasn't embellishing or faking in any way. Since then I've been positively itching to get my hands on a copy, dropping hints at housewarmings and Thanksgivings and all that.

Yann Martel has sent an advance reading copy to our Prime Minister, along with this recommendation in his accompanying letter:
I'm sure you will hear about The Cellist of Sarajevo from other people than just me. It's set during the brutal siege of the Bosnian city of Sarajevo in the early 1990s. That story was in the news for years, yet I think most of us just took it in dumbly, wondering how people could do that to each other. Well, Galloway's novel explains how. It does the work of a good fiction: it transports you to a situation that might be alien to you, makes it familiar, and so brings understanding. That's what I meant when I said fiction is "whole-person". While reading The Cellist of Sarajevo you are imaginatively there, in Sarajevo, as the mortar shells are falling and snipers are seeking to kill you as you cross a street. Your mind's eye sees, your moral sense is outraged: your full humanity is being exercised.

Yet The Cellist is a directed and digested take on reality, it's not journalism. There is subtle intent woven into the realistic narrative of its three main characters. You will see that when you read the last line of the novel, which is magnificent.
Know what I think? Harper doesn't deserve it. No doubt it's languishing in the bottom of a desk drawer somewhere or maybe even (gasp) underneath the used yogurt containers in the blue box.

What am I talking about? Yogurt? Recycling? Our PM? When it snows in Vancouver in April!

(Via Quill).

posted by Charlotte at 9:09 AM | permalink | email it |