Bel Canto

This was such a beautiful book, more about love than terrorism, the prospect of losing love, and the impossibility of love under some circumstances as well as its possibility only under special circumstances - what could have been, if only... It's very loosely based on the taking of the Japanese embassy in Peru by Sendero Luminoso - that serves as more of a starting point than anything else - but anyone who appreciates impossible love, or has lived it, can appreciate this book.

(Added January 2024: the state of Florida has blacklisted this book in schools, and what better recommendation can you ask for? As Ann Patchett said, you'd think that a book where a group is unsatisfied with the government decides to take matters in their own hands to overthrow said government would be just the message they'd embrace but no - maybe it's because they haven't even read it?)

There are certain books which start with a bang and drag you in. And before you know, you are in the midst of the story. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett is one such book.

It is a birthday party in honour of Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese tycoon, in the Vice Presidential mansion in an unnamed Latin American country, whose government hopes he will invest there. Mr. Hosokawa, however, has come only to hear the famous lyric soprano Roxane Coss perform live - he has been an opera lover all his life, and a fan of this famous singer from Chicago ever since he first heard her. At the conclusion of the performance, the lights go off and when they come back on, the party find themselves hostages of La Familia de Martin Suarez, a revolutionary organisation which are dime a dozen in most of these banana republics. They have come for the president, who was to have attended the function - but who cancelled at the last minute and decided to stay at home to watch his favourite soap opera. So the terrorists are in a quandary. Ultimately they decide to keep the more famous and influential of the hostages and let the others go. These number forty - thirty-nine men and one woman, Roxanne Coss.

What follows is the surreal existence of fifty-eight people - forty hostages and eighteen terrorists - in the palatial villa of the Vice President, Ruben Iglesias. Apart from him, there is Hosokawa and Roxane; Hosokawa's interpreter Gen Watanabe; the French Ambassador Simon Thibault; A trio of hot-blooded Russian dignitaries; the priest Arguedas, who even after being released refuses to go as he feels his duty is with the prisoners; Kato, an employee in Hosokawa's organisation who finds hidden talents within himself as an accompanist to Roxane. Among the revolutionaries, there are the generals led by the shingle-infected Benjamin; the brainy Ishmael, who learns chess by watching; the talented Cesar, who is accepted as a pupil by Roxane; and Carmen, the girl soldier, who wants to be taught to read and write by Gen Watanabe. As the days go by and weeks stretch into months, the boundaries between captive and captor become blurred and it just becomes a seething mass of humanity trying to make sense of life at close quarters, in a suspended-animation-like existence where Roxane's singing is the only constant, the fulcrum around which their lives revolve.

Everyone is in love with Roxane. Not as a person, or even as a woman; but as a symbol of the divine art which flows through her. Everyone want to possess her, be her - whether it is the millionaire Hosokawa, the government functionary Fyodorov, padre Arguedas, the girl revolutionary Carmen or even the kid Cesar who gets an erection when she sings. It is not coincidental that the novel opens with the sentence "When the lights went off the accompanist kissed her." This accompanist, who has been besotted with her and has been forcing his unwanted attentions on her from the moment they got on the plane, is a diabetic dies due to lack of insulin on the second day of captivity - as if prompting others to step into the vacuum. When she says she cannot live without singing, Father Arguedas arranges to get sheet music for her, and Kato jumps in as accompanist. From then on, life in the hostage camp is a musical journey.

Apart from Roxane, the one character who holds the novel together is Gen Watanabe. In his capacity of translator, he becomes the tongue and ears of the imprisoned tower of Babel. As the days go by, the languages mix and meld and Gen becomes not only a translator - but a teacher too: most importantly, a teacher to young Carmen in the china cupboard at two o'clock in the morning - of Spanish, English and the pleasures of love.

Language and music form the twin threads around which the narrative is woven. In Sanskrit, there is a couplet which says: "Music and literature are two breasts of the Goddess Saraswati: one, all sweetness from top to bottom; the other, nectar to thought." I was reminded of this throughout my reading experience.

There is a type of movie in which the protagonists meet, interact, form and break relationships in the space of a limited amount of hours, in a gathering where they are forced into close quarters - Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game being the classic example. Here, the Vice President learns the pleasures of housework; the French Ambassador relearns his culinary skills; Cesar and Kato unleash their inner musicians; and Hosokawa and Roxane, and Gen and Carmen, fall in love. However, the narrative here is anything but realistic: it seems poised on the threshold of magical realism, a nod to which is slyly given in the form of one of the revolutionaries reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, and complaining it would take him "a hundred years to complete it."

Being an ignoramus about Western classical music, I was totally lost about what the title meant and had to Google. This is what I got.

Bel canto, (Italian: “beautiful singing”) style of operatic singing that originated in Italian singing of polyphonic (multipart) music and Italian courtly solo singing during the late 16th century and that was developed in Italian opera in the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries. Using a relatively small dynamic range, bel canto singing was based on an exact control of the intensity of vocal tone, a recognition of the distinction between the “diapason tone” (produced when the larynx is in a relatively low position) and the “flute tone” (when the larynx is in a higher position), and a demand for vocal agility and clear articulation of notes and enunciation of words.

- Encyclopaedia Britannica

Though I got only a vague idea from the above, I feel it fits the "vocal tone" of the novel perfectly; with its surreal setting, its cacophony of voices, and its accompaniment of music. The prose is like Ernest Hemingway and P. G. Wodehouse collaborating.

A wonderful read!

This is one of my top five favorite books. Bel Canto made me a devoted Patchett fan, although her other work hasn't quite stood up to the high expectations this one set for her. Just to set the scene, I read this book while on a three week trip through Europe. Travelling by train, I had plenty of time to read, but missed a lot of the beautiful countryside (especially of France and Switzerland) because I simply couldn't tear myself away from this book, it was that good. My husband woke up on the train at one point (the ending of the book) to my sobs. I was so overcome I couldn't even tell him what was the matter (he was really worried for a minute there...then he thought I was crazy). I should clarify that I'm not an especially emotional person. I had just formed such a strong attachment to the characters in this book that the ending hit me almost as hard as losing a friend. Plus, it was just so beautifully done that the loss was almost bittersweet.
This book gave me so much to think about that I wanted to grab someone--anyone!--who had read this book and talk it all out with them. Well, that was almost two years ago, so my furor has died down. I need to read it again to write a fair review.
For the time being, though, first I loved the writing. I admire any author who can tell a great story with the words ushering me along rather than tripping me up. Another reviewer referred to the book as "lyrical" and I heartily agree. It was just beautifully done.
Second, such richly imagined characters were a delight to spend time with. I thought each character was fully developed and interesting. Even the minor characters, about whom I received limited information, still felt real. And I got the sense that there was so much more to know about them lurking just below the surface.
Finally, the story was heartbreakingly beautiful. As my waterworks attest, it was very moving, without feeling like my emotions were being made sport of. In the ending, it all just came together for me. "Bel Canto" referring to the beautiful song that was the idyllic life of the hostages and captives. But just like the opera singer's song had to end eventually, their peaceful suspension from reality could not endure. To me, what made the story and the illusion so poignant was the knowledge they had all along that it WOULD end. An audience can't fool itself into thinking a performance will last indefinitely, but perhaps the awareness of the end in sight makes the beauty of the moment all the more valuable. That reference made this story even more meaningful to me. I just loved it.
I gave this book five stars, but it wasn't absolutely perfect. I actually strongly disliked the epilogue. I found it disheartening, somewhat contrived, and generally unecessary. The story would have been better off without it.
In spite of that, this book is everything a great book should be.
UPDATE: Reread in August 2009. I still loved it, and enjoyed the writing, but it wasn't the same experience it was the first time. I wasn't as impressed, as moved, or as eager to share this book with others as I was the first time around. It must have just been the way it hit me at that time in my life. Even without it being the earth-shatteringly awesome book I felt it was before, I still highly recommend it.

A haunting and strange love story.

I have been rather slumpy lately but after reading an essay by Ann Patchett I thought maybe she was just the thing to break the slump. And this got the job done, although it's not my favorite of hers. It had been so long since I'd read it, and it was shorter than the other one I had in the house, so it was the obvious contender. What I like about Patchett is the way she considers human connection and this book certainly does that, but this book also holds you at a distance for so much of the time that it isn't quite satisfying in the way I particularly wanted right now. That said, I think she's successful in what she sets out to do here, the omniscient narration is unique, for much of the book it almost feels like you are in everyone's heads at once. I just missed the intimacy of spending time with a smaller number of characters that you get to know well.

It is almost cheesy, the way it sees a kind of utopia created by music in the most awful of situations. But somehow it never goes all the way into schmaltz, even if it is extremely romantic in that old-fashioned sense. Even as an opera lover myself, I occasionally wanted to say to the book, "We get it, the power of music, whatever," but it still manages to be not quite annoying, just walking the line. The trick of the romanticism, of course, is to bring the reader into the same delusion that all the characters have, tricking you into forgetting that there is an inevitable outcome here and that it will never come. Like I said, she's successful in what she sets out to do. It's quite effective even if it wasn't quite the book I wanted to be reading. (That's a me problem, not a book problem, as I tend to say.)

-- I liked the flow of the story --like the flow of running water --I was part of the undercurrent engulfed in submersion.


Enough said! Many other mixed and worth-reading reviews!

This is a beloved book by Ann Patchett, judging by the 2,258 people here on Goodreads who have tagged it as a personal favorite. Since I have enjoyed other books by the author, I wanted to read this one also.

The story is about a birthday party given for Mr. Hosokawa, a businessman from Japan who owns a fabulously successful electronics company. He is invited by the government of a South American country, whose motivation is for him to build a factory in their impoverished country. Mr. Hosokawa has no intention of doing so. His motivation for attending the party is to hear the famous opera star, Roxanne Coss, sing in his honor. He is her adoring fan. The birthday party is then interrupted by armed terrorists whose own motivation is to kidnap the absent President. (He had skipped the party due to his own wish to watch his favorite televised soap opera.) What follows is an almost whimsical look at the hostage situation that resulted.

I found it fascinating to watch how the situation unfolded. The reader becomes involved with the daily dramas of both the people held hostage and their captors. Gradually, they get to know each other. Complicating matters is trying to understand each other when so many different languages are spoken: Spanish, English, French, Russian and Japanese. Luckily, Mr. Hosokawa has an interpreter (Gen) who accompanied him to the party. Gen becomes a central character in the novel.

The story is imaginative and interesting. I like Patchett's style of writing and how she employed humor. Unfortunately, I found the epilogue to be disappointing, but can overlook it.

4.5 stars

“To think that God heard his name from so many voices.” (4.5 stars)

The ending of “Bel Canto” left me in a bit of a daze for a few minutes. The novel cast a spell so strong, that when the jarring reality of life springs up at the conclusion you can’t help but be a little disoriented.
This is a novel that has been on my radar for years, but I am just now picking it up.
This story, told by an omniscient narrator, follows a hostage situation in the vice presidential palace of an unnamed South American country. The hostages include a world famous opera soprano, and many business and political leaders from various countries. The point of view also considers the guerrillas who take the hostages.
I have never read an Ann Patchett novel before. I will pick her up again! She has a simplicity and lovely finesse with language. I was caught up in the story, but also in the words she used to weave it. With a precise prose that brimmed with clarity Patchett created characters that, even if only a few lines of the text were devoted to them, came across as real people.
I feel like opera gets a lot of negative attention from readers of this text. And opera is important to many of the characters in the book. However, I feel the bigger point is what opera represents to many of the characters in the text. It is a source of life and inspiration. Something that gives joy and generates much power and strong feelings. That is something different for every person alive, and when you realize that you put opera in its proper context in this book, and you can place the love that characters feel for that art in its proper context, and thus appreciate it, and its potency as used in “Bel Canto”.
So many enchanting moments in this book. So many small pleasures. I loved the world it created. I loved the people in that world. So many characters whose small joys I felt as my own. I loved their truth, their pain, and humanity.

“Bel Canto” is something else!