Bel Canto

Rating:
Summary: Gorgeous Book
Review: When my mother recommended this book to me, saying that it was about an opera singer and a bunch of diplomats who get taken hostage in South America, I was less than enthused. But I was without a book at the time, and I decided to give it a shot.

This book is gorgeous. I have no better word for it. The character development, the way the relationships grow between the characters, the care and detail that go into the descriptions of the music...

Patchett has such a gift for bringing her characters to life. Please don't let Oprah's seal of approval turn you away. This is not a "chick book." This is prose at it's finest.

Rating:
Summary: An enchanting new novel
Review: I find if amusing that I chose to read Bel Canto surrounded by classical and opera singers while I was at Youth Music camp. Bel Canto is an enchanting story of people pulling together in what looks like impossible times. Roxane Coss, famous and renowned soprano is giving a Japanese fan, Mr. Hosokawa, quite a thrill by singing at his birthday party which takes place in a mansion in a 3rd world South American country. Everything is going wonderfully until 18 terrorists, literally of all ages, attack the mansion, taking everyone hostage including Roxane, Mr. Hosokawa, Mr. Hosokawa's translator Gen, and a young priest. In the beginning the hostages fear for their lives, not knowing what any of the only Spanish speaking terrorists really want from them. But as everything starts to calm down, the exact opposite of what expected starts to happen. People who would have never meet each other for language barriers and other reasons become close friends, and sometimes more. People start to forget about dying and remember how to live for the first time in years.

I was really impressed with this book. I first heard about it in writer magazine and was enchanted from the start. Although I usually stick to YA and fantasy novels, I found this to be a pleasant surprise and change. Their is something special about the descriptive nature of the writing that almost reminds me of Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha (one of my favorite books). The characters are well crafted and quite memorable, my favorite being Gen, the young translator who probably saved lives dozens of times. This book is worth all the hype it's getting. I highly recommend this to readers of all ages.

Rating:
Summary: Great character building, but hard to get into.
Review: This book is about a group of people being held hostage in the house of the Vice President of an unnamed South American Country. The South American country attempts to attract foreign business and hosts a birthday party in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese businessman who they hope will bring money and jobs to the country. He is persuaded to attend in spite of the fact that he has no intentions of bringing business to the country because he is obsessed with opera and he admires the guest singer Roxanne Coss. The terrorists target is the President of the country, but when they find out that he is not in attendance at the party they decide to keep all of the guests hostage.

Gen is Mr. Hosokawa's translator and because of the number of languages spoken by the different guests in attendance, his skills are in demand. Gen falls in love with Carmen, one of the terrorists holding them captive. Roxanne discovers a singer among the terrorists, who it turns out are mostly young teenagers. The terrorists aren't really such bad people once you get to know them. Even Messner, the negotiator sent in by the Red Cross thinks that he wouldn't mind if these terrorists got away.

The first day takes 100 pages and it is a little boring and I found it hard to get into. But then a large group of hostages is let go and the intimacy between the remaining people in the house begins to build as they spend days and weeks and more time together. This is not the kind of book I normally read, but I did think it was worth reading because there are a number of characters and there are special passages where the author peeks into the souls of different types of people and shows you what they value in life. It seems like it took forever to reach the conclusion and at the same time, I thought that it was quick and sudden when it finally arrived. Some will not like the ending, but it made sense to me.

Rating:
Summary: Decent writing, mostly boring, totally unbelievable...
Review: Basically a Harlequin romance but better written. There were a few stiff lines, yes, like "...the silk folds of her brain" but for the most part, 'tis better fare than the pure, adulterated romance stuff. Unfortunately, though, this may be even more farcical than your average Harlequin affair: The plot is wholly implausible.
A lot of women will like this, I suppose; a lot of men will be bored to tears, like I was.
Not a lot of grit, the stuff of life--mostly a lot of fluff.

Rating:
Summary: Truly a bel canto
Review: There were two main reasons why I purchased this book: 1) the title of the book is the same as the company my cousin works for, so right away it grabbed my attention. The second reason was the cover art. I purchased the book in Europe, and the cover, being orange, stood out from all the other books on the display. I picked it up and started reading the synoposis.
Even though it doesn't seem like the plot or the characters are feasible, it doesn't matter. Pachett's gift is for weaving the two elements together in a wonderful storyline, rich with dialogue and description. So what if it's not 'reality'? This is fiction after all. I found the entire book to be very well-written, and while I was shocked by the ending, in a way it didn't suprise me. For when I went back and re-read the book, there's all sorts of forshadowing that Pachett enters in that you probably don't pick up on the first time.
This book is a love story on so many levels--human relationships, musical relationships, etc. It's truly a bel canto.

Rating:
Summary: Ann Patchett is an artist
Review: The book starts slowly, but once I got into it I was mesmerized by Ann Patchett's dry wit and her unique way of unfolding her characters as something quite unlike your first impression of them. Example: When a hostage turns on the television with a remote, the ignorant young kidnappers, in apocolyptic terror, pin him to the wall with machine guns. There was nothing in their remote jungle villages to prepare them for this! Yet they are soon hooked on soap operas. Another example: Ruben, the Vice President, a man of great privilege, discovers that he loves domestic chores. As he irons shirts, he ponders what a formidable weapon is an iron ("could it deflect bullets?") and feels more like a man. Finally, the Stockholm Syndrome is in full operation in this story, with its perverse great compassion and humanity. Patchett is an artist.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Magical Realistic Look At Music And Love
Review: Ann Patchett's "Bel Canto" is a sterling American example of Latin American magical realism from the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. While her plot, and some of her characters may be unbelievable, it is still graced by her deft plotting and crisp prose. Hers is truly a valentine to opera music and that strange phenomenom which is romantic love. She has brought together an uncanny mix of Latin American terrorists and their hostages, who somehow, manage to find common ground, and indeed, love, amidst their surroundings. The only defect is the seemingly inexplicable ending, but hopefully most shall overlook this, in what is otherwise, a marvellous, lyrical work of fiction.

Rating:
Summary: haunting novel
Review: As soon as I finished reading this novel, I started again from the beginning. I think that the people writing negative reviews are probably not familiar with magical realism, a Latin American style adopted by Patchett for this novel set in South America. There is an excerpt from a review on the back cover that really says why this book is so wonderful: "the impulses toward beauty and love are shown to be as irrepressible as the instincts for violence and destruction." Too much fiction is written about the human heart of darkness. Patchett succeeds remarkably well in exploring human goodness. This book, if you understand the purpose, and understand the style, is a wonderful experience. I would recommend it for college students that are tired of reading about how terrible human beings really are. After a semester of Hobbes, Dazai, Kafka, and Conrad, this was the refutation that I wanted.

Rating:
Summary: another rushed ending
Review: Bel Canto starts off promising. The variety of characters stuck inside a huge house during the hostage crisis (ranging from millionaire businessmen to opera divas, to guerillas) make for some interesting interactions. However, like her characters Patchett seems stuck. The book appears extremely rushed in the end, lacking of the care she puts into the earlier part of the book. I was left confused, and the change of character epilogue didn't relieve anything. This is a book worth reading if you are home sick, traveling, or just looking for some entertainment, but it won't amaze you in anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Insomnia cure
Review: I read the book because there were so many book discussion groups with the book on their lists. What a waste of time. I like the comment by the reviewer who said it was basically a Harlequin romance but better written. I can't attest to that as I've never read a romance novel, but I like the spirit of the comment. I appreciated that Patchett attempted to give us some insight into some of the characters, but that effort was remarkably uneven. I kept feeling as though I was missing something because I'm not an opera afficiando, but after a while I didn't think so because I was just bored, bored, bored. I thought Patchett got lost with her own intentions, or perhaps even she too was bored with her story line, when the Swiss Red Cross guy insisted that the Generals make a decision that very day to surrender. It was so completely out of character and absolutely implausible. The whole set-up was ridiculous. Actually, I thought the long-term kidnapping premise was implausible. The chapter before the epilogue was incredibly choppy and unclear. I figured the folks who came into the house were supposed to be the Good Guys, and I couldn't help wondering why they didn't act sooner if that was their solution all along. It made no sense. The implication of wholesale carnage irritated me and made the alleged Good Guys look ridiculously stupid, and then the Epilogue was just a waste of words and paper. Roxanne and Gen? You cannot be serious. Ridiculous. Not going to happen. Why??? There was absolutely no reason for the two of them to end up together. The entirety of their relationship with each yearning for the other? They marry to stay connected to their four-month history and the love of the ones they cannot have? Puh-leeze. A much better ending would have been for Gen to work for Roxanne as she began her world tour, or for her to have become a recluse, or for them to have spent a few days consoling each other before parting before she began her world tour. I like the idea of Roxanne becoming a recluse with the occasional rare performance and taking on only the most promising students in memory of Caesar, establishing a scholarship grant or foundation to find incalculable singers in unexplected places and Gen working for her by touring the world to find such singers. I cannot imagine that he would have desecrated the memory of his employer by marrying Roxanne.