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Summary: A beautiful "world within a world" story.
Review: Let me begin by saying that this is not the kind of book I usually read. I usually read historical fiction, thrillers, etc... So, I will admit that it was hard for me to get into a book like this. It was kind of slow in the middle and I was wishing it would pick up the pace. However, when I take this book out of the context of what I usually read, it really does have beauty to it. It's really not about hostage-taking, it's about people. It's about people who have time to think about what they've missed, what they gave up, and what they may have never realized what it was that they dearly love.
Patchett fleshes out the characters nicely and we understand their lives, pre and post hostage crisis. The one character that was not thouroughly examined was Roxane. Then again, in this book she really is more of a catalyst, or "centerpiece" if you will. Everyone in the house is a satellite that orbits around the soprano and is changed by her gravitational pull.
To those who have reviewed this book and complained about the ending should consider this. Yes, it was a horrible ending but not because of a miscalculation on the part of the author. If the ending was more along the lines of what most readers would want, I don't think that Patchett's characters would have learned anything from their ordeal. Life would have just carried on till Bel Canto - The Sequel. Everything has a beginning and an end. Remember, Bel Canto is a story about a "world within a world".
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Summary: Wonderful, action-adventure-opera-relationships Wow!
Review: I don't normally read novels, but the plot outlined intrigued me - its based loosely on a kidnap in Peru a few years ago. Prachett manages to unusual event of putting opera centre-stage in a kidnap drama, and still manages to
Make the book a compulsive page turner.To flow with the book you have to suspend disbelief - benevolent kidnappers,
Art (specifically opera) as the secret soul of a cross section of people, which humanizes an intolerable situation. Various improbable relationships etc.
But the overall affect is entrancing.
The ending, predictable at the outset, seems indefinitely suspended so that by mid way through, the reader yearns for everyone to be either left alone or released to an improved world. However the predictable, becomes inevitable but the end of the siege is described in removed, almost balletic terms. Wonderful. Read this book. A few quibbles - the country is never named, mainly referred to as ' this place' ' this hellhole' etc. This is too cumbersome, Why not say Peru, or make up a name? Some of the international characters have names which are
Straight out of the headlines - the Russian character Lebed ( a tough general in the Yeltsin years) , the Vice President is Iglesias (reminiscent of the crooner) (, the Japanese Watanabe ( equivalent of Smith), which doesn't help with the disbelief suspension. However an excellent read.
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Summary: Bel Canto - For Whom the Bell Toils
Review: I fail to see why this book is acclaimed. While the subject is timely "terrorism and kidnapping in an unnamed 3rd world Latin American venue", the plot is tedious, and implausible. Worse, the author spends 50% of the novel telling the reader about the voice of a primadonna...yes...a selfish primadonna and by the end of the book we are supposed to like her??? Only a quarter of the way into the book I had tinninitis because I was so sick of listening/reading about The Voice. Other characters are woven in but are very stereotypical. The ending is so improbable...it seems the author ran out of time or ink and certainly creativity. Maybe not, since there is only the slightest plot and a boring preponderance of adjectival description of operatic voice. This book could have been saved if there had been some real history woven in or even some real geography a la James Michener...some redeeming value.
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Summary: Too much familiar cultural stereotyping
Review: I thought this book was well written but as much as I read reviewers saying that it rebuked stereotypes, I really think it reinforces them. Here we have our terrorists (and in all fairness hostages alike) falling madly in love with the like blonde-haired blue eyed opera singer. The book is replete with passages about how the terrorists are awestruck by her beauriful blue eyes and blond hair. The noble savages (terrorists) later come to love opera, too thus appreciating the "finer" (i.e. better) European culture. One character even makes reference to how "civilized" the hostages are . The minutiae, however, of the lives of the terrorists is never fully explored in much depth, we never get their backstories - only those of the mostly European hostages. Additionally, never once is there any kind of meaningful cultural exchange from the terrorists to the hostages as if they have nothing to offer culturally - they need only learn. While I thought this book was well-written, it was hard for me to get beyond the overall heavy-handed cultural arrogance of the book that intimates that European culture (e.g. opera) has so much to offer Central/South Americans while they couldn't possibly offer anything of equivalent cultural value.
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Summary: Contrary to popular review
Review: I read all reviews enthusiastically and then read this book for a book club. I was disappointed after all the hype. It is very slow to get started, the storyline and characters are developed too gradually, and there is a significant "jump" in the storyline at Ch5. Despite monotonous slowness in the first 100p the second half of the story transitions to one where terrorists assist hostages in secret rendezvous, terrorists & hostages are falling in love and making love by moonlight, and one of the central (hostage) characters is training a terrorist to become an opera singer. Not wanting to ruin it for those who still buy the book - the ending finishes swiftly as it needs to, but is so futile. Bel Canto steps from reality (hostage situation) to drug haze to reality (ending).
Was that Patchett's intent? To write a story that offers the "what if" scenario of a hostage situation, or to suggest the notion that not all terrorists have bought into the party line? Is it a way of trying to deal with the increased potential to be touched by terrorism - and have a whisper of hope that they will be nice?
It was just too far fetched for me!
Rating: 
Summary: languid and beautiful melody of a book
Review: There truly is music in this book. At first the music is slow, melodic but not catchy... as we move through the situation of terrorists kidnapping a whole party of vips assembled in a third-world country, honoring the birthday of a Japanese CEO who's agreed to attend only to hear the famous opera singer the country managed to entice for the night. But stick with this book... it becomes an unforgettable love story, as the terrorists, many of whom are barely more than children, learn to appreciate the beauties of life, and the potential within themselves, and as the vip's release their old lives and find joy and redemption in their new surroundings. This is a love story-- not just between two particular couples, but a love story for the human race and the possibility of redemption and grace we can find in one another if we only would. Though tragedy waits-- and we are warned of the end very early on, so I am not giving anything away-- we hope against hope that this enchanted interlude could continue, that love will somehow surpass the reality that awaits. And there is some hope in a surprising epilogue. Music is a transforming agent in the book, as coloratura Roxane Coss' singing tames the savageness in all the assembled "terrorists" and "hostages." It makes you realize how much we take for granted-- as I type this I listen to beautiful music on my ipod, and expect that I can talk to my loved ones by telephone. These things are priveleges! But it's inspiring to see how human identity surpasses the trappings of what keeps us busy.... unforgettable, haunting.
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Summary: A Moving, Lyrical Novel
Review: "Bel Canto" paints just one landscape-the mansion of a Vice President in an unnamed South American country-but fills it with memorable, interesting character. The story begins with a birthday party for a Japanese industrial titan, who will be serenaded by his favorite soprano. Then the terrorists pour through the air conditioning ducts and take over the party, the mansion and the lives of the guests. This is no quick-ending siege: it goes on for months, with the women guests (with the exception of the soprano) being taken away.
Patchett paints a multi-lingual, multi-lyrical world. Lives and characters merge. Over the months, some terrorists see, envy even the lives of the hostages (one beautiful young female terrorist is stunned by the sheer luxury of the home). Likewise, some hostages begin seeing things from the vantage point of the terrorists. The Vice-President, the mansion's owner, finds out that he is an outstanding housekeeper. In this small world, there is love, laughter, music, and of course, fear and the threat of death.
I felt the book's only flaw lay in the ending but I won't ruin it!
I would highly recommend this book to individuals who enjoy such novels as "Atonement" or "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress." It is top-notch contemporary fiction. I would not recommend this book for individuals who want a lot of a action or a number of different settings. The beauty of this book lies in the diversity that can exist within one canvas.
Rating: 
Summary: Plodding...
Review: Well, I simply can't finish is, and I'm 3/4 of the way through. I bought it because of the good reviews on Amazon (Patchett's relatives?) and I have yet to care about any of the characters or the thin plot. Feels like walking on a sticky floor. Yuck.
Rating:
Summary: overhyped and boring
Review: I can't believe the great hoopla and reviews this book recieved. I was very dissapointed in it and found it rather boring and a ridiculous story with a more ridiculous and unsatisfying ending
Rating:
Summary: Too much hype
Review: Sorry, I didn't see what was so special about this story -- couldn't suspend disbelief and didn't care for any of the characters. Ending was very disappointing.
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