This is a weird and beautiful book about machine guns, chopping onions, and opera singers. Check your disbelief at the door and enjoy the language. I don't care for the ending -- but it was worth it anyway. Lovely writing.


***wondering why all my reviews are five stars? Because I'm only reviewing my favorite books -- not every book I read. Consider a novel's presence on my Goodreads bookshelf as a hearty endorsement. I can't believe I just said "hearty." It sounds like a stew.****

Four stars because I'm going to pretend the ridiculous epilogue doesn't exist.

"There were others...who would have said, if asked, that opera was a collection of nonsensical cat screechings, that they would much rather pass three hours in a dentist's chair. These were the ones who wept openly now, the ones who had been so mistaken."
Yeah that would be me, avoiding a book about music and opera. Not for me? So mistaken. This is a beautifully told story full of wonder and love. The characters feel so authentic, my heart just swells and breaks for them. Ben fato, signora Patchet, belissimo!

Absolutely wonderful. I am so totally crying over it.

Life in a bubble....teeming with disparate souls...a microcosm of our world and what drives us, all circling around the magic of music, the art of the voice. I've heard it said that when you want to understand someone who seems foreign to you and all you know, move in--move closer. In that closeness you find the commonalities and humanity that unites us. This novel demonstrates that when guerillas with a purpose take over a party with a purpose, giving us a front row seat to the softening of boundaries, the growth of understanding, the possibility of love.

I was not immediately enchanted, but the story grew on me, and the underlying themes were well drawn and articulated. I'm not a fan of opera (quite the opposite, as it sets my teeth on edge), but I can appreciate the magic of music, which fires off a primal instinct that draws us all in, reaching our inner cores. The characters got under my skin. The ending...well, it's a sad commentary on life. But the living that takes place in trying circumstances was mesmerizing.

I am so upset. But not for the reasons one might expect. The fact that it was not a happy ending was expected. On the contrary, most authors would have made a happy ending out of this story, and I applaud Ann Patchett for not taking the easy way out- however much I wanted it for all the characters I became attached to. Which she did was not necessarily worse, but definitely as bad. It was not only sudden, but seemingly random. Almost as if she was rushed to meet a deadline. Almost exactly in the middle of page 310/318, Roxane Coss screams. Because the hostage situation is finally over.

In an unknown country, in the home of the Vice President, a birthday party is held for Katsumi Hosokawa, the visiting chairman of a large Japanese company and opera enthusiast. To get Hosokawa to invest in the country, famous soprano Roxane Coss is scheduled to perform as the highlight of the party. Near the end, a ",very reasonable" band of terrorists emerge, turning into a hostage situation when they realize the President is not present, as expected. (He elected, instead, to watch his soap opera, changing his mind at the last minute. After some negotiations, bring reasonable terrorists, there are thirty nine hostages kept, the rest released. Among the remaining hostages are not only Hosokawa and Roxane Coss, but an assortment of Russian, Italian, and French diplomatic types. Swiss Red Cross negotiator Messner is roped into service while vacationing. He comes and goes, wrangling over terms and demands, and the days stretch into weeks, the weeks into months.

Yes, I said months. Over four months total. And everyone is friendly and no one is shot and there are a few love affairs. Believable? Not really.

I actually was not glad to find out this was based on a true story. Somehow, it seemed, disrespectful, for lack of a better word. It was based on the 1996-1997 Lima Crisis in Peru. Yes, the unnamed country was Peru. Which was ridiculous, how far Patchett went to avoid naming the country, using all sorts of pronouns. She should have simply made one up if she was not at liberty to use "Peru", instead of making it a distracting "secret". Alas, how true to life was it? Definitely based on a true story, not a true story. Stretching the definition on that, even.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanes...)

Alas, this is my third Ann Patchett novel, and, as always, her stories are character based. This is what she does best, and does her best yet (as far as the ones I have read) in "Bel Canto". I did fall in love with many if not all of the characters. (There were a few more characters than I would have liked to keep track of throughout).

The omniscient third person point of view really catered to this book well, floating from room to room, character to character. That being said, supposedly this categorized "Bel Canto" as magical realism? I suppose that is one way to define the genre, but not mine. Magical Realism is incorporating fantastical or magical elements into an otherwise rational world, and this was more making a true life event unbelievable with overt scenarios. Not even merely sugarcoating, but making things up. The terrorists playing soccer with the hostages? Falling in love with each other, rendezvous at two in the morning in the kitchen cabinet?

Alas, here are my reasons, why Patchett's beautiful use of language, coupled with her insightfulness and my consequential love for the characters she creates ultimately outweighed the idealizing and romanticizing.

"Their eyes clouded over with tears for so many reasons it would be impossible to list them all. They cried they cried for the beauty of the music, but also for the failure of their plans. They were thinking of the last time they had her sing and longed for the women who had been beside them then. All of the love and the longing a body can contain was spun into not more than two and a half minutes, and when she came to the highest note it seems that all they had been given in their life and all they have them came together and made a weight that was almost impossible to bear."

"All of the orchestra supports her now, it reaches with the voices, lifts the voices up, the beautiful voice of Roxane Cossis singing her Gilda to the young Katsumi Hosokawa. Her voice vibrating the tiny bones deep inside his ear. Her voice stays inside him, becomes him. She is singing her part to him, and to a thousand other people. He is anonymous, equal, loved.”

Lyrically said; this is what amazing art can do to us.

"It was odd the way they never spoke but always seemed to be in communication."

Reference to the love between Hokosawa and Roxanne. Yes, love can transcend language.

"We make exceptions in extraordinary times."

At its heart, this is what "Bel Canto" is about. How we all might find out audacious, glorious, magnificent, impossible things about ourselves and each other if only given the opportunity. If only given the chance, we might do things we never thought possible. Of course, in this rendition, they are all for the positive.

My thoughts on the characters.

**** Spoilers ****

Terrorists:

Generals Alfredo, Ben, Hector. Ben is the main guy, he has a family, is very "reasonable, is proud of his terrorists, expresses regret for recruiting some of the girls. Plays chess with Hosokawa.

Recruits Beatriz, Carmen, Cesar, Ishmael. Beatriz is addicted to the Maria Soap Opera, Hosokawa gives her a watch even so she knows when it starts (one in the afternoon). Yes, the same soap opera the President neglected attendance for. She also tires confession for the first time there, a sort of coming of age. Carmen, I adored her. Vivacious young girl, torn between her duties and what she sees as noble efforts and her love for Gen. Was very good at being invisible, guided Hosokawa in his rendezvous, to get him upstairs to get room. Cesar is an unborn until now amazing Soprano, becomes a prodigy to Roxanne when he sings out loud for the first time the night after Roxane and Hosokawa's first time together, she being asleep when she typically does her daily practicing. Ishmael impressed everyone by learning chess by watching. He is small for his age, thus impressing even more in his hard work, always more than the others. If offered to live with Vice President Ruben and work for Oscar Mendoza after this is "all over". He dares to believe.

Oscar Mendoza is great friends with Ruven, often worries about his family, fearing his wife unknowingly allowing young boys to take advantage of his daughters (the way he did her when they were younger), to the point of dreaming murdering them. He is an example of an interesting character.

Simon Thibault is the French who cried himself to sleep, caressing his wife Edith's scarf, having reestablished his love for her during the hostage situation, realizing how much he loves her, before she is released.

Victor Fyordorv proclaims his love to Roxane Costs with a cute, sentimental story about how his grandmother, above all, treasured a book of impressionist paintings, used gloves to turn the pages, only took it out sometimes, teaching him to appreciate art (thus Roxane and thus gives him some "permission" to love her).

Vice President Ruben Iglesias. Thus is his place. Throughout the four plus months, he continues to serve as host, realizing how pampered he is, learns to truly appreciate Esmeralda, his maid who actually is the one to stitch a wounds inflicted during the situation, before she is released. He misses his children, his wife, wants to adopt Ishmael.

Messner seems to want to be on both sides, obviously unsuccessful in negotiating anything.

Father Arguedas holding confession with two chairs pulled aside, an arrangement everyone, terrorists and hostage alike, respect. He is the one hostage that volunteers to stay, not once, but twice.

Tetsuya Kato is the pianist, replacing Christoph, when he dies of a diabetic insulin insufficiency. He used to be a secret pianist, but was the only one there when Roxane needed a pianist. Turns out he is a maestro, had him wondering what he will do when real life returns.

First love affair. Roxane Coss, the great. Did not really like her, although Hosokawa send to make her a better person and more humbled. Christoph had shared his love for her on the plane, she had shunned him, she feels regret. Hosokawa discovers happiness for the first run. Probably the most changed character. His love for Roxane change him, shows him works and things he never imagined possible. Family and his wife were arranged, he used to see it as an obligation, time was everything. Now, in this works where tune had been suspended, he never wants to leave this was woman that does not even share his language.

Second love, which I savored so much more. Carmen the beautiful young terrorist and Gen the translator. How they shyly like at each other and how that became her asking him to teach her Spanish to studying in the kitchen cabinet to get taking him outside onto the grass under the moonlight to make love to the promise of studying English and Spanish for two hours before making love but being unable to keep that promise. Young love (in their twenties). Not only young love, but audacious, unimaginable, compelling disremembering love.

Now, the ending? Everyone dies except for Father Arguedas, Simon Thibaut, Vice President Ruben Iglesias, Gen, and Roxane? So why not wed Gen and Roxane?

So it occurred in real life. Well, it did not fit this story, in which Carmen and Gen made such a lovely story. The same goes for Hosokawa and Roxane. Totally made their stories, the entire novel, disingenuousness.

A generous four stars, although this is only by practicing my own disremembering in regards to the ending.

This oddly structured pageturner from Ann Patchett fuses opera and a hostage crisis–and surprisingly, it works.

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 novel is like a perfect little slice of The Magic Mountain. Melancholy, yet infused with the beauty of the world; the glorious potential of life. How can such a perfect novel falter so fatally in the final few pages? The short epilogue is truly misguided, and almost undermines the rest of the novel.

Some of you loved it, some of you hated it. I'm leaning towards the latter. I thought it was a good idea poorly executed.
A small South American country throws a lavish birthday party for an important Japanese business executive with high hopes that his electronics company will build a factory to help prop up their ailing economy. The executive, Katsumi Hosokawa only agrees to come because opera diva Roxanne Coss will be performing. A terrorist group invades the party at the vice president's home taking the partygoers hostage. The hostage crisis continues for months. Stockholm Syndrome takes root, hostages develop feelings for the young gun-wielding terrorists, bonds form, relationships bloom. And the language barrier is not an obstacle thanks to the incredible translation skills of Gen Watanabe. And of course the music, ah yes the incredible singing voice of Roxanne Coss becomes a polarizing, transcendent force that beguiles absolutely everyone. No one escapes its wondrous effect. Just once i wanted someone to stand up and shout 'ENOUGH! SHUT THE F*** UP ALREADY!!!
The first 3/4 of the story was boring. Characters in general, were poorly developed (except Katsumi Hosokawa- love that guy) there is little to move the plot forward or hold your interest (the vice president likes to clean. Alot.) and the writing is fodder for mass consumption. She's one of those writers that make you think 'hey I can be a writer!!' (I cant)
And the ending, albeit emotional, i thought was predictable. I was hoping for a more
imaginative outcome. The ingredients are all here for a good story, I just think Patchett was hoping it would write itself. It didn't.
And that epilogue, as my 14 year old son would say, was dogwater.

Thoroughly enjoyed this one.

Inspired by the Japanese embassy hostage crisis in Peru, Patchett has made a poignant, albeit fictitious, tale of it with a opera soprano thrown in for good measure.

Peppered with dry humor that had me laughing out loud in train stations at four in the morning, I loved every bit of this book except the ending which I have conveniently blocked out.

Bel Canto is the second book I've read by Ann Patchett. Commonwealth was the first and I loved it. I'd been wanting to read Bel Canto for a long time. I liked some of the book but there were parts of it that really seemed to drag on and I had no problem setting it aside at intervals. I felt like the action came very! late in the story. The ending was fine, however, I wasn't thrilled (or even kind of pleased) with the epilogue. For all the hype I'd hear about this book, it was somewhat of a letdown. That said, I liked the overall story enough to want to finish it.