Review: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Winner of the Orange Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • New York Times Readers’ Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century
“Bel Canto is its own universe. A marvel of a book.” —Washington Post Book World
New York Times bestselling author Ann Patchett’s spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
Patchett’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
Review:
Dear Ann Patchett,
One of my goals in real life had been to find myself a book club. I read your book for a book club, unfortunately I was unable to attend the meeting, so I am defaulting once again to discussing the book online.
I also want to note for the readers – as seen in the blurb this book won awards and in my opinion the writing alone merits all of those awards. It is beautifully written and once again I am worrying in my head whether I am even worthy to review this story, as I often do with much of literary fiction. So this is not a review of the writing by all means, it is at most whether the characters and actual story worked for me.
The blurb gives a very good summary. Terrorists take hostages at the birthday party and a famous opera singer ends up being one of the hostages. Apparently the book is loosely based on some real events. I did not know that and the blurb does not mention which real events so I am not going to tell you that in order not to spoil anything.
I will say this though, THIS IS NOT A GENRE ROMANCE. There are several love stories in the narrative, probably the biggest is the love for the music – opera music and just the music in general, and there are several love stories between certain characters, but none of those stories are romances. I cannot stress this hard enough. The book has many gorgeous description of playing music and singing music. For example here is one:
“Tetsuya Kato began to play. He started with Chopin’s Nocturne in E-Flat Major, op. 9, no. 2. It was the piece he had most often heard in his head since coming to this country, the one he played silently against the edge of the dining-room table when no one was watching. At home he looked at his sheet music and turned the pages. Now he was certain he had known the music all along. He could see the notes in front of him and he followed them with unerring fidelity. In his heart he had never felt closer to Chopin, whom he loved like a father. How strange his fingers felt after two weeks of not playing, as if the skin he wore now was entirely new.”
For me though this book was mostly about horror, because being kidnapped by terrorists is a horror and that’s how I read this story first and foremost. I figured my reading was probably against what the author intended the reader to take from this story, but a reader’s interpretation cannot be forced. I was reading all these pages about bonding between hostages and terrorists and how music connects all people and I am sorry, but for me it did not work. I mean, I was touched by some things happening and the lost hopes of kids that were not offered anything else in life besides joining the cause were quite sad, but I was mostly okay with the ending (not quite mind you and I found epilogue an eye rolling reading experience), but for the most part I was quite okay.
Grade: B but only because I kind of feel that giving a lower grade would be disrespectful to the writing and to the story. My enjoyment level was nowhere close to that grade.
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Sirius, thank you. I acquired Bel Canto a few years ago because an older gentleman in my favourite indie bookstore passed me this book and said, This is my favourite book in the world, you have to read it! So I did. Like you, I was blown away by the beauty of the writing, but I didn’t believe the story it was in service to. I fancied it more as a fairy tale than horror. People just wouldn’t react like that during a hostage situation. (Okay, I’ve never been in a hostage situation, maybe I can’t judge.) I would split the grade: A for the writing style, C for the story.
I read Bel Canto several years ago for a book group, so I now only recall bits and pieces of the story. I do remember feeling sad at the outcome, the romance reader in me having wished for a happy ending.
I’m always intrigued when people talk about ‘beautiful writing’ as that is something that totally eludes me. (I can detect writing that has poor grammar or purple prose but not beauty.) Thank you, Sirius and Eliza, for sharing your thoughts.
@Sirius, I believe that if you read the book and have thoughts, then you are a worthy reviewer.
I read Bel Canto shortly after it was published, perhaps it was on my library’s “new books” shelf. I was absorbed by the story, but also had a “what is happening here?” pulse going on in a corner of my mind throughout. I didn’t feel that the ending lived up to the story, and have not been tempted to read another book by Ms Patchett.
@Kareni, I’m with you on wondering what constitutes “beautiful writing”. A travel writer, sailing away from a city, referred to the city’s lights as sparkling like sequins on dark velvet. I thought that was lovely (decades ago) but find myself rolling my eyes as I type. Beautiful writing might be as much about the impact while reading as an immutable idea.
@LML: thanks for your take on “beautiful writing.” I will certainly be interested should others weigh in.
@Kareni: that’s a wonderful question re: what constitutes beautiful writing. I had been thinking about it while commuting home and I am afraid I am not going to be very coherent. For me beautiful writing is a good writing for sure, but thats not a complete answer. I am not even necessarily thinking about “lush” writing as the only one that I would call beautiful. I have read the books where author chose to write in a very concise, very restrained, very “spare” writing and I still thought it beautiful.
Maybe the writing that describes the beauty? I don’t know, maybe it is the case of “I know when I see it” :)@LML: Thank you. I mean I am not going to restrain myself from saying it if a famous book did not work for me or anything like that, and I can certainly talk about any book saying that it did not work for me. But I find myself taken aback sometimes wondering if I can go a little deeper than that if the book is famous and well loved and whether I can criticize even a structure and the characters and writing, especially writing.
@Eliza: It was more of a dissonance for me you know? Yes it read like a fairy tale a bit but a dissonance was that a situation was a horror, not sure if that makes sense.
May I steal the expression about “writing” being in service to the story? I like it a lot.
I prefer to be immersed in a story, so I don’t generally like it when the writing pulls me out of the story, even if it’s because I note how beautiful the language is or how unique the imagery is.
If something hits me emotionally or makes me laugh, that’s a bit different. I might reread the line and smile, or enjoy the fact that other readers have highlighted the same line. But if the writing is so “beautiful” that it calls attention to itself, the book is probably not for me.
Of course other people have different standards, and that’s great! I do think it’s helpful to think about what one prioritizes, because it may help you decide if a book everyone else is raving about is for you or not.
@Kris Bock: Right, I agree that if writing interferes with a story it could irritate me as well. I keep thinking about it, and I think when I want to “taste” the words on my tongue usually I feel that the writing is beautiful.
Right now I am reading a very depressing book for example and surprisingly enough find the writing beautiful.
@Sirius and @Kris Bock: thank you both for your thoughts on beautiful writing; I appreciate your insights.
I actually wrote an op-ed about beautiful writing here on DA a long, long time ago and it resulted in a wonderful discussion. Different readers had different definitions of what was lyrical or beautiful in writing. Ironically, I cringe when I read some of my writing in the original post. I think my taste has shifted toward more spare (but still beautiful) writing. But as someone said in that discussion, attempting beauty is risky because it’s easy to overdo it or fall flat.
Anyway, Kareni and others, if you are interested in different people’s different definitions of beautiful writing, it’s a great discussion to read.
https://dearauthor.com/features/letters-of-opinion/the-element-of-style/
@Kris Bock: I think writing can be both beautiful *and* not pull a reader out of the story, For me Anne Stuart’s books from the 2000s on is very beautiful while at the same time being very spare and sometimes riveting. Here’s an example (for me) from Ice Storm:
@Janine: That was an enjoyable piece and a lively conversation in the comments. Thanks for sharing the link.