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Summary: "What is it about music that moves us so deeply"
Review: "What the deuce is there in music, and above all in singing, that moves us so deeply?" (J Joyce)
If you want more information on the specifics about the plot and characters of this book-go read the other very good synposes provided by several readers. I read this book about 3 months ago on a long/quiet trip and it still lingers in the curves of my brain. It was quiet, recumbent , beautiful prose, rich with imagery. I don't ever recall reading about music in the way that Ann Patchett describes it. I remember thinking, I can hear this. It is so real and deep that you are immersed, swimming through the pages. Music, like scent, evokes emotion merged with memories and desire. Yes the ending was abrupt-this is not a fairy tale by any means. I am saving this for another re-read on a still weekend-it is not a book to rush through.
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Summary: spellbinding
Review: I found this book spellbinding, entirely enjoyable, impossible to put down. I too wondered briefly how Roxanne could enamour everyone in the room so completely, but found the description of the music, the strange new sense of community so alluring that I chose to believe it all, hook line and sinker. I can't wait to discuss all the psychological components with my reading group, the character twists and changing roles, the notion of loving your captors, and now more than ever, I want to explore opera. I am inspired. How fun. Read it!
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Summary: I've heard this somewhere before
Review: Oh yeah the evening news. I like erotica and all, but this was just a mindless attempt to titilate and I thought that it was just so poorly done. Everyone acted like caricatures. It seems that everyone is knocking off everyone else or themselves in the literary world these days and this is just more of the same. Read my reviews of other books, because I have found some originality off the beaten path.
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Summary: Appealing Arias
Review: It's an implausible story (even though something similar did happen), populated with an implausible cast, but beautifully written and oddly compelling.Every person in the book, even the hostage-takers, is portrayed as essentially good and decent. Many of them are people like you and me with no particularly discerning features, but Patchett draws attention to their most favourable sides, eg Thibault's infatuation with his wife, the considerate General Benjamin and the Vice President and his efforts to keep everybody comfortable. Characters like the multilingual Gen are unrealistic, the relationships between him and Carmen and between Hosakawa and Roxanne Cross contrived, the resolution to the hostage crisis is somewhat abrupt and I didn't buy the epilogue at all. But despite all that, I was hooked from page one and captivated throughout the story. It's an easy read, best enjoyed with Callas singing in the background.
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Summary: Pulp, not literature
Review: I am at a loss to understand the literary success of this book. It has won both the Pen/Faulkner and The Orange Prize and has been well received by the critics.
Whether you as a reader enjoy it, will depend on your expectations. If you are looking for well written prose and a book that will, in some small way, lead you to view the world a little differently, you will be disappointed.
The prose is poor, full of elementary mistakes. There are many point of view glitches, non sequiturs, and clunky sentences. Much of the grammar is appalling, as is much of the editing with words missed out and in the wrong place.
In all these things it is no worse than many successful genre books, and to be fair, once the novel gets into its stride, the plot is absorbing in a ...typical way. However, this does not make it into the literature it is hyped to be.
If you enjoy say, John Grisham, you will probably enjoy this, but if you are looking for Annie Proulx or Richard Ford quality, you will be disappointed.
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Summary: It's more than the music....
Review: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett has spoiled me as a reader. The telling of this story is magical, and has raised the level of what I expect to get from a book. You can read a synopsis of the story above, which might make you wonder what makes it so special to read. Ah ha, it is Ann Patchett's use of words to evoke a magical place surrounded by a transparent bubble into which I could peer, much like the vice-president's home surrounded the captives and terrorists and provided them a creative cocoon for four months. I thought about these characters for days after finishing the story. It's more than the music; it's the characters' yearnings and what they discover about themselves. Read it with opera playing in the background...
Rating: 
Summary: Two out of three ain't bad,
Review: This holdiay season I wanted to go with erotic reading, so I got TOO MUCH TEMPTATION, OLDE HOLLYWOOD and this book. I was disappointed with the character choices throughout this book. I was expecting great tensions and twists and got none. It was natural, terrorists hostages angry men, frightened women threats of death for non compliance.... The acquiesence was too easy and the ending will leave you shaking your head wondering why the author ever came up with that. I'm going to watch the news tonight and see if I can find a story to turn into a novel like this author did. So much for originality..... But the other two books were great so I'm way ahead of the game.
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Summary: A Bit off Key
Review: Bel Canto was a novel I couldn't wait to read. As I plowed through the first 150 pages, I was bitterly disappointed and could easily have put this novel down without ever picking it up again. The book begins at a party with the world famous soprano Roxanne Coss performing for a crowd of important coporate big shots from around the world with one thing in common, they all love opera and they are all enamored by the soprano before them. A terrorist takeover is attempted during the performance and becomes botched once the terrorists realize their target, the president, of the fictional South American country is not in attendance. What happens from that point is the crux of the plot. This novel attempts to explore the relationships that develop in this unique hostage situation. The realationship between the captors and the hostages begins to blur and soon the group has developed a psuedo community that is held together by their love of music. Although they cannot communicate with language because they are all from different countries, music is the common ground they all share. To really enjoy this novel, the reader has to buy into the illusion that the soprano Roxanne Coss is irresistable. That was a hard one. Somehow Patchett manages to create different relationships between the hostages and terrorists; romantic, teacher/student, father/son and mother/daughter. Slowly I found myself buying into Patchett's illusions and near the end I was rooting for these new found relationships to survive. This book explored alot of really interesting concepts; music as the universal language, hostage mentality, love and loss. I only wish that Patchett had not trivalized the events with her over the top characterizations and sappy love stories between the characters.
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Summary: If the humanities are a dead-end, then why read this novel?
Review: The message of this novel seems to emerge from the juxtaposition of man's highest instincts for opera (art) and his basest instincts (violence). Throughout the novel the author weaves an apparently insincere tale about the miracle of art in transfiguring human relations -- even victims and hostages seem transformed by the bel cantos of the diva and her protege. However, in the end, when push comes to shove, art is futile in enabling mankind to overcome its differences and the base instinct for senseless violence will predominate. How can one ultimately embrace such a dead-ended premise? I kept anticipating that art would somehow triumph as the true heroine in this novel -- such a story line would have been worth reading. Instead, the author leads us down this deliberate ineluctable path in a futile tale in which the humanities are worthless, leaving one utterly defeated and disillusioned in the wake of such brutality. Question: is this novel held out to be art? If so, and art is futile as evidence of hope for mankind, then what is the point of reading this novel? To learn what we already know from virtually every popular Hollywood movie -- that man is inclined to act as a savage beast? We haven't heard this trite message a gazillion times? A more inspired work would have given mankind a reason for believing that great art and music and literature represent real opportunities for humanity to unify and to overcome our many fundamental human differences. As a writer who seems to care for and know a fair amount about art, I can't imagine why Patchett wants readers to come to the inevitable conclusions to which she prods them in the back with a rifle butt. Bel Canto is insipid mainstream pap, which is clearly enriching its author. Do yourself a favor: try Jose Saramago, Oscar Hijuelos or Gabriel Garcia Marquez, instead of this uninspired, banal, vapid, intellectual dead-end. Sorry, but this is one of the worst novels I've ever read.
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Summary: Poor timing, well written
Review: My wife and I read "Bel Canto" in the middle of 2001. It's a beautiful story, with sharply-drawn characters and surprising complexity. I found the book easy to read, my wife did not. The difference: 9/11. I read the book before, she read it after. It's ironic, because while Patchett's book is based on true events, it seems untrue, a fairy-tale perhaps, now that we have all been made aware of the true horrors of terrorism. One recoils now from a lyrical love story set among hostages... That being said, a good read. The parallel love stories are captivating, and one cannot help but think of magic realism while reading this book. The ending is a bit harsh but has a ring of truth to it -- I won't spoil anything -- but Patchett's last chapter interestingly undermines the conventions of the love story.
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