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Bach's Cello Suites are sublime; this book is not. It’s not a bad book by any means and I’m glad I read it. It tells the life stories of Bach and Casals in relation to the cello suites, along with the story of the author's discovery of the suites and subsequent research into them. There are six suites each made up of six movements so Siblin structured his book into six parts of six chapters, each with the title of a suite and a movement, an overly cute device in my book. As for the subject matter, it was interesting up to a point but since I knew the main facts of Bach’s life there was little new there for me. I knew nothing of Casals so almost all of his story was new to me. But while I get the fact that Casals was responsible for (re)introducing the forgotten Cello Suites to the public during the early twentieth century it seemed to me that for much of the book that the author was straining to link Bach, Casals, and himself to the suites. Bach’s catalog runs over 1000 pieces, and while the suites are wonderful so too is nearly all of what Bach wrote. He seems to have penned them and never given them a second thought. Casals is rightly associated with the suites but he also covered nearly every important piece of cello music in the repertoire; his life was not all about the cello suites though at times the author makes it seem that way. In a way the sections of the book I enjoyed most were Siblin’s own efforts to learn about the suites. His story of a lover of rock and roll music (he’d been rock critic prior to writing this book) who became disillusioned with it and went off searching for something else is one I can understand. I’ve been there. That we both ended up at Bach and classical music was the original reason I picked up the book. Again, it’s not a bad book. There’s no crime in concentrating only on the cello suites. I simply felt the cello suites hook was overstated. If you find the subject matter interesting at all you will probably enjoy this book.