Rating: 
Summary: It Haunts Me Long After I Finished It
Review: My sister recommended this book to me after her Book Club in Pittsburgh fell in love with it. I was moved by the humanity that Patchett depicted in this novel and it's possibilities. It has a spirituality that never seems overdone and showed that the barriers of class and riches and education and language don't stop the human spirit.
I have recommended it to everyone that I talk to since I finished it and they have been as thrilled as I was.
Rating: 
Summary: Never Mess with the Coloratura!
Review: The book Bel Canto is not great literature, but neither is it fluff or empty intellectual calories. What it is is an engaging story well told that is hard to put down. The motif is Decameronesque using the event of the terrorist capture of elite party goers to create the set up that allows for the telling of individual stories that orbit around the salvation of art and love--the soprano of the title--the salvation of intellect--the knowledge of the translator which allows these polyglot pilgrims to interact--and the salvation of service--the ineffectual politician/host of the affair. And in its oddly deconstructed way only some but not all who love, who know, or who serve are saved.
Rating:
Summary: An unlikely utopia and a wonderful read!
Review: I think the reviewer from the Washington Post put it best, "Bel Canto is its own Universe." With that said I think you have to put aside the implausibility of the situation, and enjoy Patchett's ability to entrance the reader with intriguing characters set in a lush and enchanting environment. Instead of focusing on time and place Patchett has created a character study in a closed environment. The kidnapppers and hostages interact and form unlikely relationships with the surreal backdrop of Latin America as the canvas. She has elegantly infused romance, action, and drama into one of the best reads I have found this year. If you're interested in a more realistic look at terrorist/hostage situations, try the nonfiction section. If you're looking for an engaging and extremely entertaining novel to escape into this winter, Bel Canto is it!
Rating:
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.
Rating:
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!
Rating: 
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.
Rating:
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.
Rating: 
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.
Rating:
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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