The Cellist of Sarajevo -- Take 2

I finished up The Cellist of Sarajevo a couple of days ago.  I was five or six pages from the end when I put the book down on Saturday, but I was having a real bummer of a day on Sunday and didn't feel like it was a good time to finish what was shaping up to be a downer of a book.

And boy was I right.

The book is structured around four characters -- the Cellist, Dragan, Kenan, and Arrow.  The Cellist has the first chapter, in which you learn of his plan to play the same piece of music in the open air for twenty-two days to commemorate the deaths of that many people who were waiting in line for bread when they were killed.  The other three characters share the remaining chapters, and over the course of the book, you learn how the Cellist's decision to play his music affects or intersects with their lives.

The book is fiction, but based at least in part on real events, though compressed in time to make for better story-telling.

As with many books (or movies) which are told from different perspectives, as the reader (or viewer) you tend to identify with or care more for some characters than others.  So too here.

Bottom line: a bittersweet tale of a war-torn country, that somehow brings out the best in some people.