Rating: 
Summary: Magical or Unrealistic?
Review: The book is often praised for its "magical" feeling, but often the occurences and characters merely seem to be contrived and false. Patchett's writing is beautiful: she's undoubtedly one of the better writers working today. But it's hard to buy everything in this book: the terrorists stunned and pacified by a beautiful opera singer; the superhuman Japanese young man who just happens to speak nearly every language on earth; the lack of police or military response for DAYS and DAYS on the outside. If the reader can accept Patchett's world as predominantly allegorical, then this book can work. But I found it lacking in a crucial emotional and logistical reality that one sees so apparently in Marquez or Allende. When a truly brilliant writer like Marquez depicts revolutionaries, he's able to capture that thread of cruelty and hostility in them as well. Patchett's terrorists come off--with the exception of the one with shingles--as naive boys, soothed by music as easily as cartoon beasts, and incapable of anything truly threatening. I don't buy it. Even in a story as fanciful as this one, there is that element of anger that's needed for us to understand the hostage situation. Without it, everything seems like the central conceit of a long and occasionally dazzling writing exercise.
Rating:
Summary: Bel Canto
Review: Don't miss this wonderful story of opera and thrills. After reading this story, I wanted to find a sequel because it was such a fast, wonderful read. Humor, thrills, politics and love. What else could one ask for? Pack it in your suitcase. It is a must read for the summer.
Rating: 
Summary: So much potential.
Review: I read the first 160 pages, which took forever, and the last chapter, and I got pretty much the whole story. At first I thought the book was sophisticated and intriguing, but it took so long to get to the point that it turned me off. The end was out of nowhere and left many questions. This IS your run-of-the-mill, "people get taken hostage and then you learn about their sordid lives." Not to my taste at all.
Rating:
Summary: Starts out well...
Review: Although it was enjoyable overall, it was not that great. (I preferred the Magicians Assistant.) In Bel Canto especially the story drags on too long, the middle has too much "filler".
Rating:
Summary: A REVERIE OF GUNS, TERRORISM AND PUCCINI
Review: The premise of this very readable book is based on the 4-month Peruvian hostage crisis in 1994. As the novel opens, 57 men, 18 terrorists and one remarkable opera soprano (Roxanne Coss) begin their new life behind the closed doors of the vice presidential mansion, in a surprise guerrila coup. The government of a small South American country was holding a birthday party for the head of Japan's leading electronics manufacturer, hoping to attract its business. Mr. Hosokawa, they know, can't resist the opportunity of a private performance by Ms. Coss. But it's not Hosokawa or Coss the terrorists want -- they were after the country's president. Unfortunately, they quickly learn that he skipped the soiree to watch his favorite soap opera. Upon successfully storming the building, the rebels find their kidnapping attempt foiled, and they don't know what to do. The plot is engrossing, and Patchett's pen is eloquent in many moments. The mild relationship that develops between the Japanese businessman and the soprano, despite the lack of a common vocabulary, is interesting. Yes, there are issues with the novel. The characters are somewhat cardboard although we are pointed to everyone's good sides. The resolution to the predicament itself, though supposedly hinged on an actual event, is specious at best. Yet, Bel Canto is high on my recommendation list because of the variety of grounds it manages to cover with a very readable summer treat -- art/music, the quagmire of politics, love that transcends geographic boundaries and trappings, Red Cross negotiations, fear, rebellion. Patchett makes it happen. This isn't a masterpiece by any stretch of review, but not every thing that comes highly recommended need be one.
Rating: 
Summary: Beautifully written with lots of depth
Review: There are so many things about this book that I love. In addition to the lyrical narrative, I found the relationships that eventually develop between the captors and the hostages surprisingly effective and haunting. It made the surprising climax and ending resonate all that much more.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: I've just read several of the reviews and am compelled to write my own. Others have told you the plot lines, so I won't. I loved how every sentence was beautifully crafted and turned. I could imagine the author spending time experimenting with each phrase to get it just right. The individual sentences stopped me in my tracks many times because of their impact. I loved the characters and got quite involved with their individual growth and development (as people).
Rating:
Summary: Enchanting
Review: I read Bel Canto several months ago and cannot get it out of my mind. Ann Patchett has painted a picture - no, written a beautiful opera - about a community forged by accident, bonded by captivity, and captivated by music. As in the best of Robert Altman films, the characters are alive and distinctive. As a writer myself, I am impressed that so many characters are developed with such subtlety and warmth. Whether captor or captive, statesman or diva, peasant guerrilla or business mogul, their humanity shines out at us, and a sensitive reader cannot help being drawn into this odd little community of people who discover that what they have in common is stronger than that which divides them. Bel Canto plays to our emotions honestly and without manipulation; it touches us with its warmth, sadness, and light. It is the best contemporary novel I've read for years.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars for a perfect ending to a romantic siege...
Review: Wow. I loved this book. It was as implausible and fairy-
tale-like as can be, a total, romantic hot fudge sundae with
nuts, cherries and opera on top, but who the heck cares?
It was divine to meander through. I felt like a child in a
strange and beautiful garden, and when finally the book
ended (alas! even I did not want the 'siege' to be over) I wept, because the ending itself was so absolutely perfect. When you thought about it later, you had to admit that there could not be any other finis. Sigh.
Rating:
Summary: I'm raving about this novel to everyone I know
Review: Friends and family are getting a little bit bored by now hearing me rave about Ann Patchett's superb "Bel Canto," but I can't help myself. It's a startlingly wonderful novel built on the most unlikely premise that a terrorist plot to kidnap the president of an unnamed third world country can evolve into a thing of beauty and wonder. Roxane Coss, an American opera singer, has gone to "the host country" (as Patchett diplomatically refers to the country which, by her description, appears to be Peru) to sing at a birthday dinner for a visiting Japanese industrialist. The Japanese industrialist is being wined and dined so that the host country can convince him to build one of his many plants there, creating lots of jobs. The industrialist, however, has come merely because he learns that Roxane Coss--his favorite opera singer--will be singing to honor him on his birthday. He has no intention whatsoever of building a plant in this country and has jetted here only to be in the same room with Coss and drink in her extraordinary singing. When terrorists burst into the room and take everyone hostage (quickly releasing all the women with the exception of Coss), everything--of course--changes. Diplomats and bureaucrats from dozens of different countries begin to live together as hostages, employing the extraordinary linguistic talents of Gen, the industrialist's translator. Gen becomes privy to everything, as he must communicate for everyone--even the terrorists. Patchett deftly and memorably sketches the characteristics and proclivities of about a dozen major characters in the book. She shows us how everything has changed for the hostages--theoretically, very much for the worse--and yet how even in an unimaginably difficult situation, people can still find beauty and love and honor. The characters leap from the page, full-blooded and full of life. Yet as they forge new alliances and discover each other's foibles and virtues, we know that the clock is inexorably ticking, ticking, ticking towards a time when everything will change again--as suddenly, and as violently, as it all began. This is an extraordinary piece of work, and I was really and truly sad when the book ended.
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