This is a very unusual, dreamlike, strangely romantic book, which proceeds in a slow-paced, unpredictable fashion. I admire Patchett’s ability to flit seamlessly from one character’s POV to another, and I found her insightful, compassionate approach to be involving and sometimes mesmerizing.

There were some issues with pacing, but overall I feel confident that this creative and imaginative take on a hostage crisis will only grow more enjoyable as I continue to think about it.

2.5 rating

Opera, more than any other art form, has the sheer muscle and magnitude to pull us into another world, and while that world may be as fraught with heartache as our own, it is infinitely more gorgeous. (Ann Patchett)

The founder of the largest electronics company in Japan, Mr. Hosokawa, is invited to a party in South America to celebrate his birthday. Not being a huge fan of traveling abroad, the only reason Mr. Hosokawa accepted the invitation is because the famous opera singer, Roxane Coss, is attending. The evening starts out wonderful. Mr. Hosokawa has brought his interpreter, Gen, to translate for him. Everyone appears to be having a wonderful time until a loud noise is heard, and a large group of armed terrorists take over.

What began as an attempt to kidnap the South American president (who was not in attendance) results in a four-month hostage takeover. However, as the days, weeks, and months pass, bonds are formed, not only with the hostages but also with the terrorists. Unfortunately, what this group does not realize is that this party is inevitably going to end in tragedy.

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I would not call this book a page turner. It is a very slow burn read, but I do adore Ann Patchett, so I pursued until the end. My favorite part of the novel was the excerpt at the end, which explained how her love of opera music inspired this book .

I love the writing of American author Ann Patchett. She can write brilliantly about human relationships and how they are forged... no matter what the situation or historical context. She makes it look easy but only an experienced writer of her caliber, can pull it off so well. Ten year ago, 14 members of an activist guerrilla group captured over 600 hostages in Lima, Peru. Ms. Patchett has based her novel loosely on what she imagined happened during the intense hostage hold-out that lasted four months. A very rough and bloody encounter of Peruvian history told in a beautiful, sensitive way. Good for Book club discussions.

i don't think i want to rate this book. in my opinion it's not a good book, but there is something very powerful about it and i don't think a rating can do justice to the combination of these two facts -- the fact that it isn't a good book and the fact that there is something powerful about it.

it isn't a good book for all the reasons everyone who gave it one star brings up. what is powerful about it is that the whole book is a tribute to womanhood. someone told me yesterday that everyone loves women. it had never occurred to me, but of course it's true. womanhood is the locus of desirability. this book is a tribute to the desirability of women. this seems to me its great power. you can say that the desirability in the book revolves around music but that would be false; it revolves around women.

what is powerful, in my opinion, is that this point -- that women are the locus of desirability -- is made in a rather unself-conscious, unexamined way in what seems to me, all things considered, a rather superficial novel (sorry everyone). i wouldn't be surprised if ann patchett were not even aware that she wrote a book about the desirability of women (or she may know now because i can't possibly be the first person to notice this, but it wouldn't surprise me if she didn't know it when she wrote it).

the fantasy here is that there is a household of men and three women, two of whom are highly desirable, and nothing bad happens to these women. all the men fall in love with the women with a passion all of them find impossible to express, but the line into violation, abuse, violence, or even genderpower is never crossed. in fact, the line barely exists. it's mentioned two or three times in the book by the narrator, but it seems as if the characters, except maybe for carmen, cannot even conceive of it. all fifty-nine (or however many they are) men think and act as if they had made a solemn pact to forget that women are ever taken advantage of. no, that's not true, because then there would be some strain, some tension. so let me try again: it's as if the power of the music or the power of the captivity or the presence of the priest or something had inoculated these guys from the male drive to possession and control of women.

as i said, the novel does nothing to delve into the complexities of this, but it is still interesting to me to see how powerfully this fantasy of female desirability/safety is constructed. everything in the novel contributes to shoring it up.

the fantasy didn't tickle me (do i love my men and women locked in mortal combat?) but my guess is that what most people liked in this book, what drew them to it, is precisely this otherwordly, peaceful, tender scenario: two women worshiped by more than fifty guys who want nothing in return and would never dream of touching a hair on their heads.

There are a lot of themes here, opera and the bel canto tradition of singing, a siege by a group of exceptionally gifted terrorists in a south American country, communication difficulties between a group of people thrown together without a common language, impossible love affairs between unlikely characters.
Patchett handles some of these themes convincingly, for example, the beautiful voice of the soprano reaching into the souls of the other characters and awakening feelings previously unsuspected in their depths. But as is the case in most operas, credibility was stretched quite a bit throughout the tale, not least by the almost complete absence of violence between the dozen or so kidnappers and their forty plus hostages, all confined within a small space for more than three months.
The pace was painfully slow at times, perhaps reflecting the stagnant nature of the siege but the writing was excellent.

Beautiful, engaging and perfectly told story of the clash between a young group of terrorists and their hostages.

I have no idea why readers like this book. Set in an unnamed South American country, it was a pretentious bore, filled with stuffy characters who are suffering some form of Stockholm Syndrome as they are being held captive by guerillas.

So the famed opera singer bonds with a Japanese bigwig, and other characters fall for each other when it’s supposed to be a night of real panic and horror- and there’s beauty in this?

Ms. Patchett writes beautifully, with humorous sentences that sometimes leap from the page, satirical and sentimental at the same time- but this one did not do it for me. It is the epitome of Bougie fiction that I’ve come to despise.

This was an awful story.

I loved the Dutch House, which I am now beginning to feel was entirely because of Tom Hanks' narration. Next I read State of Wonder which was an ordinary experience and now this - Bel Canto which was a real chore.

The characters were paper thin, unrealistic and not well developed at all. What made this experience particularly difficult was the impossibly unreal storyline.

Stockholm Syndrome love, inter hostage relationships, combined with chess, music lessons, concerts and outside ball games. This all created a trifle of far fetched, terribly written nonsense. Served up with lashings of over sentimentality.

About halfway through I realised this was going to be an unforgettable experience. It was.

1 Star

What a journey! It took me a long time to read this book, and there were great gaps in my efforts. Reading was an effort, for a long time a slog, because it is a slow story. I read another book in between the first and second halves. This is not fair, but it’s what I did. And the story and characters are so vivid they maintained a reality inside me even during the gaps.

By the end, I was floored. This is a great book! And reading it was as slow as real life, but, like real life, I’m glad I lived it.

4-4.25 stars

This book was a big surprise to me of how much I liked this audiobook. I've heard a lot about Ann Patchett and her books from my Goodreads friends. Many either love her books or find her works forgettable. There seems to be no in-between area with her novels, which meant that I had to give one of her books a shot to see where I land on the spectrum. This is my first time reading an Ann Patchett and it was a really nice experience. This is a slow paced plot so my friends who need action and constant changes or things occurring should avoid this book. For me, the slow pace gave me time to feel like I was in a dream where I could clearly picture the characters, the mansion and its scenery, and truly care about what happened to them all in the end. The epilogue doesn't really sit well with me so I'm going to try and forget about it.

I truly enjoyed this listening experience and think the audiobook is the best way to go when reading another Ann Patchett novel. In complete honesty, I'm not sure I would have been able to stick with just reading a print version of another slow paced plot. Sometimes you need a little extra something to keep the interest levels peaked.

To me, this book is luminous. Glorious. Magnificent. Perfect. (Well, almost perfect. I'll explain in a moment.)

I first read "Bel Canto" in 2005, and I was so absorbed in the story that I would sneak away from my desk at work just to have a few precious moments with it. The story opens with a renowned opera singer, Roxanne Coss, giving a private performance at the home of a vice president of an unnamed South American country. Several people in the room are already in love with her, and others will fall in love with the sound of her voice.

The moment she's done singing, the room is stormed by guerrilla fighters, and everyone in the home is taken hostage. What follows is a fascinating look at what happens when a group of strangers are forced to live together for weeks. The fighters make demands, a poor Red Cross volunteer acts as intermediary with officers outside, and meanwhile, everyone inside the house tries to get along, despite numerous language barriers.

Which brings me to one of my favorite characters, the translator Gen. Without Gen, the entire story could not have happened, because he was the one who helped people communicate. Gen is constantly in demand, translating from English to Spanish to Russian to Japanese and back to English again.

There are some surprising and emotional attachments that form -- even Gen falls in love! -- and by the end of the book, I was in tears. My only complaint is with the ending, which I won't spoil, but to say I was devastated is an understatement. But given the scenario, you can't really expect a happy ending, can you?

The characters are beautifully drawn, Ann Patchett's writing is gorgeous, and some of the scenes are so vivid that it would make a wonderful film. I would heartily recommend this book to anyone who loves literary fiction. Brava!

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.)