I was very impressed with this novel, his third but this one is really getting a lot of press and he has even sold the film rights. Great to see a local (teaches Creative Writing at UBC) making money on writing. He is exploring how people cope in wartime and uses the real incident in 1992, when Smajlović played Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor on his cello at various times during the day to honour the 22 people who had been killed while queuing for bread at 10:00am.
I just finished this book and by chance The Trek (UBC alumnus mag) arrived and there was an interview with Galloway. I think Fern will be particularly interested in his choosing a musical form for his book. Very appropriate given the starting point. Fern did her MA thesis using a musical form as structure...the fugue, if I remember correctly.
From the interview:
"For The Cellist I wanted the story to be structured around a trio sonata, which is three parts: one melody and two bass lines. Each of the lines are more or less weighted equally. They follow the same structure as a sonata, and each can work on their own as a separate entity. This structure, which follows the novels three main storylines – Arrow’s, Kenan’s and Dragan’s – also helped me divide the characters into thematic models: food, water, violence."
An then I found out that Baez visited Sarajevo in 1993 to honour Smajlović and there's a music video on YouTube with some footage of cellist at the end. What a great lady she is although I'll never quite forgive her for not singing at least one song when she appeared at UBC to speak...wonderful to see her anyway.
