Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding and Original
Review: I couldn't put this book down. I don't often give five stars, but I was so enamored of this book that I immediately got the other books Ms Patchett has written. This is still my favorite, with Magician's assistant in second place.
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.
Rating: 
Summary: Can Belto
Review: Wish I could understand what all the fuss is about. This book was woefully unsuccessful at holding my attention in even the slightest way. I bought it because of the title, only to find out that singing and opera is a minimal part of the plot. I couldn't even figure out where it was taking place - finally got the plot from reading one of these reviews and learned it takes place somewhere in South America.In a word, boring. Hope other readers have better luck with this one. I just didn't get it.
Rating:
Summary: A fantasic read!
Review: "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett deals with a group of people from various countries who were held hostage by a terrorist organization somewhere in South America. The group of hostages consisted of Roxanne, a well-known soprano singer from the United States, Mr. Hosokawa, the president of a corporation in Japan, Gen, the translator and others. Soon, the hostages understood that they were not going anywhere and hence they formed relationships with their kidnappers. Patchett chronicled their daily lives and how this experience changed the course of their lives forever. I really enjoy this book as the story is absolutely mesmerizing. Ann Patchett did an excellent job as I really feel that I know her characters personally as she is able to make her characters come alive. This book is well-written, smooth, and there are definitely some poetic expressions that help to enhance the book. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a relaxing yet meaningful read.
Rating:
Summary: PLEASE AVOID!!
Review: I picked up this book from Amazon's main competitor because I overheard a vendor recommending it to another customer. BIG MISTAKE. This is probably the first review I write about anything I own and hopefully won't feel compelled to forewarn anybody about anything else. The writing is bad (not a good sign when you think you can make some recommendations to the author), the characters are not fully thought out and are caricatures of Latin American soap opera maids, ambassadors and guerrilla fighters. My guess is that Ann Patchett has never fully explored Latin American culture and hence does not understand what she was writing about. She probably never even sat down to think about what is the relationship one has with music because what she pours over and over in this awful book is the idea that music turns most everybody into a stupid creature (except for those who execute it). In addition to this book I bought Nick Hornby's "31 Songs," a book about the author's relationship to music in which he explores what it is that makes him -and us as well- fall for a song (a delightful read of another kind but one that shows that the author put some love into the writing process). Save your money and please do not buy this. Ah, besides, some of the Spanish words she uses are misspelled and some of the sentences are poorly constructed (grammar mistakes!). Help yourself... AVOID! By the way, I finished the book to see if the ending could be any worse than the rest of it... it was.
Rating:
Summary: Boring and Shallow
Review: Thisis a novel consisted of character sketches and caricatures. The cardboard characters have no depth and they are too many. One keeps reading, not because one is so engaged in the plot, but with the desperate hope that the story may get better. But alas, the narrative remains boring and shallow-shallower that anything one has read. The writer has researched opera well, but has no knowledge of medicine and politics. The so called "terrorists" are caricatures who resemble Mexican cliches in Western movies and the "good hearted" diplomats and corporation owners (the guest/hostages) are either steryotyped according to their nationality or so sketchy that one forgets their existence, let alone caring about them. The soperano is a doll and the romance between her and the Japanese factory owner is not even a good melodrama. One wonders what is funny about all this? (if it's meant to be funny!) And dindn't the writer's editor remind her that one doesn't die of "lack of insulin" or one's face cannot be stitched with regular needle and thread without one practically passing out of intolerable pain? This Vice President who is being operated by the house maid feels so good in her arms that one wants to close the book right there, rush to the bookstore and get her money back. And a pack of ice take care of the pain, although it infects!!! On the whole this novel has so many serious flaws that the reader gets irritated at the author, the editor (who should have adviced her better) and the publisher. And why was it in the best seller list? Why the standards of literary novel have fallen so low in this country?
|
