Rating: 
Summary: Unlikely Love Story
Review: Don't be put off by the unlikely subject of this moving and beautifully written novel. Even the author, who I met and heard speak in May 2002, has trouble describing her unusual set-up. It's about opera (of which she knew nothing when she started writing the book) and hostages, a most unusual combination. Yet Anne Patchett controls the story like a well-rehersed symphony. And yes, as the action unfolds it becomes less a political treatise and more of a love story.The characters are extremely well-drawn, from the ineffectual Vice-President to the selfless priest to the twitchy terrorists, mostly ordinary men and clueless teenagers who find themselves stuck in a no-win situation. Unlikely relationships form and love blooms in spite of impossible barriers of language and nationality. And if the ending seems a bit tacked on, know that the author assued me that true love reigns. And she should know!
Rating: 
Summary: A very enjoyable book
Review: I would have given this book 5 stars, but I did not like the ending. I just could not accept it. Other than that, I found that I was not able to put the book down and it was a very enjoyable story.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful adagio
Review: Bel Canto is itself, a beautiful song; the writing is beautiful singing. This is a story is about quietness and the changes it brings about. It is about the beauty inside us that no one notices. But most of all it is about living. The story is improbable... a birthday party for a Japanese corporate CEO in an unnamed South American country is supposed to get the Japanese company to invest in that country; the party is interrupted by terrorists who want to kidnap the president of that same country; the President of that country skipped coming to the party so that he could watch his favorite soap opera. So, what else could the terrorists do but take all of the guests as hostages? But, how else would you get a renowned American opera singer in the same room with the translator; the Vice President of that country in the same room with the boy Ishmael who learns chess by watching; the girl terrorist Carmen in the same room with the CEO? This was not the plan. The characters are improbable. No one panics. No one shows his true ugly self under the stress. The exact opposite occurs. The characters settle into quiet routines that seem more akin to a retreat than a kidnapping. Patchett's writing is like a beautiful Mozart adagio. The book's exposition is slow and haunting, and it resonates long after it is put down. Ann Patchett is the only writer I have ever read who makes music with the silent words on the page. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: A book that asks "What if?"
Review: What if you were at a party in a foreign country that was interrupted by terrorists? Now, what if the terrorists wouldn't let you go, and you were there for months on end, with only the other hostages and the terrorists for company? This book asks those questions, and although it is an unlikely situation, gives the reader some answers. The hostages are bound together by their circumstances--languages must be overcome, music is enjoyed, and the destiny of a group of people is changed... This book exemplifies the notion that music is the universal language. The characters I liked best were Gen, Roxane, Messner, and Hosokawa. Gen & Messner were trying to do the best they could in their situations. Gen was forced to be translator for the entire group. Messner was in the unfortunate position of Red Cross representative, and negotiator with the terrorists. I think that both of them knew that the hostage situation was going to end badly, and that it just couldn't continue. Roxane & Hosokawa were my favorites because they both brought something to the story. Hosokawa grew during the course of the book--his life totally changed. Once he overcame the guilt of the party being in his honor, he dedicated himself to making the best of the situation. Roxane, although she didn't grow as a character, I think that she learned a patience and an appreciation that she didn't have before. Read this book--maybe you will also learn some life lessons.
Rating: 
Summary: Lifeless and superficial
Review: ... I read it because I'm going to take a class on opera this summer, and I thought the book might give me insight into the genre. Instead, I found it to be a shallow, uninspired study of the interaction between a group of hostages and the captors with whom they become intimate as their period of confinement stretches into months. Some of the characters intrigued me at first; the opera singer Roxane aroused my interest with her devotion to her art, and I was curious about the Japanese executive's conflict between his fealty to his job (a real stereotype, by the way) and his love of opera. The author never takes us inside the heads of these characters, however, and they each seem to lack a soul. The two love affairs that evolve over the course of the novel provide some interest, but their lack of depth made me feel at times as though I were reading a light romance novel rather than a work of serious fiction. And the ending? Utterly unsatisfying! I won't reveal how the star-crossed love affairs resolve themselves, but to my mind it only showed how feeble the characters' emotions were in the first place.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I have great difficulty understanding why this book generated any interest among the critics. At its heart, it's little more than a bland love story with a little opera thrown in to boot, and it fails to capture the essence of either love or music.
Rating:
Summary: Realizing One's Humanity
Review: Being one of a hundred people or so gathered for dinner and an operatic concert doesn't do much for intimate friendships. However, the circumstances of the book, namely a terrorist takeover, brings these people together in a most trusting, kind, and intimate environment. There's no longer time or room for superficial chitchat. Each person becomes human. Music is certainly, surely, a catalyst for this. Art does that to us. This is a beautiful, flowing, glorious story. The facts are far less important than the metamorpheses of the individuals. Ann Patchett understands us and translates us onto the written page with grace.
Rating:
Summary: A Sweet Sadness
Review: A story that lingers in my mind, and causes me to want to discuss it or at least tell about it, is for me a measure of that book's quality. And after reading Bel Canto, I found that it has measured up enough to spark the need to write my review here. A work of fiction, though maybe fantasized a bit, is allowed to go wherever the author wishes it to. The premise may have not seemed realistic to some readers, but to me that's what made it such a delight. I think Patchett imagined this small Latin American idealistic rebel group who wanted to help the people, only to have their plans fouled up on account of a soap opera! What they were left with was an international array of hostages and an opera singer. One could see that they had no intention of killing anyone, yet once the plan fell through, they were left with thinking up fresh demands in hopes that the guests in their custody (mostly foreigners) were of enough importance to bring about compliance. Thus unfolds the development of characters, the familiarity slowly occurring between guards and hostages, and the sweet sadness of knowing that nothing good could come in the end. Even knowing this, I still exclaimed out loud at the sudden death of the boy singer.
The ending puzzled me until I went back and re-read a paragragh where Gen is revealed as having an attraction to Roxane, but that was early on, and when he discovers beautiful young Carmen, he attaches to her youth and spirit, and anyway, his loyalty to Mr. Hosogawa, and his servile status wouldn't allow him to act on any feelings toward Roxane. So what is more fitting than for the two who lost so much should find redemption in each other?
This is just my take on it, and I think the author could have given the reader a bit more insight, so the book gets 4 stars.
Read it because it's a very very good book!
Rating: 
Summary: It doesn't work. It's terribly overrated.
Review: Yes, people are raving, and I began to read with great
anticipation, but the book doesn't work. The characters
are not at all deeply imagined, and I never felt close to
any of them. Maybe this is what happens when you base a book
on an idea (and one lifted from the news) rather than
characters.
And her prose is fine but nothing great, no sentences you'll
be jotting down and quoting to others. A great novel really brings you deep within the people of
the story and shows you something new. This doesn't do it
at all. Read Russell Banks or Joyce Carol Oates or John Edgar Wideman.
They write great novels.
Rating:
Summary: Bel Canto
Review: This book was one of those "can't put it downers." I have recommended this book to everyone that I have come into contact with. The way Ann Patchett describes the relationships between the hostages and the captors makes you want to be a fly on the wall in this "mansion prison." Ann Patchett concludes with an ending that fits.
Rating: 
Summary: At times beautiful, at times extremely flawed
Review: If a novel is at once tremendously beautiful and amazingly flawed, how will these two characteristics be reconciled in the final evaluation of the work? Will the flaws be forgiven as minor technicalities, overwhelmed by the novel's beauty? Or are they so intrinsic to the overall work that they cannot be separated, leaving a sour taste in the reader's mouth that even tremendous beauty cannot overcome? Or perhaps they peacefully coexist, allowing the reader to separate them and evaluate them individually. Read Bel Canto, and answer for yourself. The winner of this year's Fen/Faulker Award, Bel Canto is one of the more beautiful novels I have read in a long while. In an unnamed South American country that bears a strong resemblance to Peru, a group of terrorists sneak into the vice-president's home as he is hosting a birthday party for a Japanese businessman and take dozens of people hostage, including the world-renowned opera singer who had performed at the party. A protracted hostage situation ensues, extending over a period of several months. And during this time, bonds of friendship, trust, and love develop between terrorists and hostages. Relationships that at first glance might seem unnatural or unlikely quickly become meaningful and powerful, full of the most genuine emotion. Love and compassion gradually transcend and overwhelm the adversarial nature of the situation, powerfully reaffirming all the humanity that is common to us all. And the music provided daily by the opera singer serve as a backdrop of beauty, simplicity, and grace, a common language among people from different backgrounds and cultures. Her music brings hope and happiness, and kindles love in the most unexpected of places. Throughout, Patchett's prose evokes a full range of emotions from the reader. Her writing sings, her sentences dance off the page with grace and beauty. But, alas, this is not a perfect novel. Some flaws are simple ones, errors that any editor should have caught, which makes them all the more inexcusable. In her attempts to sprinkle the text with bits and pieces of Spanish, Patchett unfortunately displays her lack of knowledge of the language by committing grammatical errors that even a first year Spanish student would catch. In her description of a chess game, she mistakenly refers to the horse's head of the rook. And perhaps most embarrassingly, one of her male characters is named Guadalupe, which happens to be the name of the virgin saint of Mexico - most definitely a woman's name. These errors, while egregious for a work of such enormous beauty and magnitude, could perhaps be dismissed as technical, not substantive flaws. But alas, there is a major substantive flaw as well. After writing a novel in which every turn feels so appropriate, Pratchett tacks on a three-page epilogue with a plot twist that seems so out of touch with the rest of the novel that it almost invalidates the beauty of the first 300 pages. And unfortunately, it is the ending that makes the final impression on the reader. I can only hope that it will not also be the lasting impression.
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