Bel Canto (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)

Like Hilary Mantel, Ann Patchett can switch genres, topics and tones with each book she produces. I knew nothing about this book, but I enjoy her writing - particularly loved The Dutch House. Bel Canto is a world away, though there is the same attention to detail in setting the scene, and the same ability to make you warm to a character in spite of yourself. In this book she manages to make a harrowing event, hostage taking, into a mildly amusing diary of developments. The hostages are a group of wealthy business men and their wives who have met together for a birthday celebration in the residence of a minor diplomat in a Spanish town. The assassins are looking for the president, but he fails to attend the party, so they take the entire gathering hostage instead, including the famous soprano who had been booked to sing at the party. Subsequently, women and children are released, but the diva misses the moment, and the captors decide that she is worth keeping in order to strengthen their demands. Music, and opera singing, infuse this novel, and becomes the motivation of many of the events and decisions within the group of hostages, and indeed some of the captors. The seriousness of the situation, and the humour used to describe the everyday life inside the house, (they all settle down to a comfortable routine) make a curious combination, which wouldn't be to everyone's taste. I enjoyed the book, but was not carried away by it, hence the four stars.

Bel Canto: Italian for Beautiful Singing or Beautiful Song If Puccini was alive today, he may well have written this story. This is a book that centers around an opera singer and is written in the style of an opera. It has all the hallmarks: a heroine who all men fall in love with, love affairs between unlikely protagonists, West Side Story style bad gang find common ground (and love) with good gang, poor meet rich, national stereotyping, tragic death (won't tell you who) and a twist in the tale. It took me a while to enjoy the book. It wasn’t until I switched my mindset to one of sitting high up in a theatre, absorbing an unrealistic story on the stage, suspending reality, and just enjoying the melodrama that the page turns became enjoyable. There are references to the modern TV soap opera, people who discover the world-beating talent that they never knew they had, fathers adopting lost boys, boys who go unnoticed until they reveal themselves to be girls, bad guys with bad skin and a love of chess and even a character called Carmen. All that was needed was for the author to rename the chapters to Acts. The whole opera is played out on a single set of the home of a South American country’s Vice President. Much of the prose is beautifully written and the characters are memorable and full of personality, so sit back, put on your favorite Verdi or Rossini playlist and wallow in the romanticism and tragedy.

Bel Canto seems to be the Marmite of novels — you either love it or hate it. The one person in my book group who prefers non-fiction to fiction was captivated by it. She described the wonders of the characters and events in great detail. She described with great feeling incidents that had left me untouched. She accessed meaning and depth of character where I found none. She talked of love, magic, romance, of the transcendent power of music. For her Bel Canto was an immersive experience. Unfortunately the rest of us had a range of less positive responses. I was the one who disliked it most and I remain flummoxed by it. It's an award-winner and I expected to enjoy it. The first 80 pages or so were readable and I settled down with the expectation that it would develop — but it became, for me, steadily more tedious, flat and unbelievable. I was locked out of it, as if watching the action from behind a glass screen. Because the characters cannot speak each others' languages there is very little dialogue, so there is little chance for them to talk for themselves. Patchett instead tells us what everyone is thinking and feeling: she tells us that Mr Hosokowa and Roxane Coss (the diva who casts her spell over everyone in the house) have fallen in love though I really couldn't see or believe it. Patchett also seems to wilfully ignore psychology. What group of men (more than 50 if I remember correctly) held hostage by some pretty lacklustre terrorists inclined to spend their days watching TV, would not attempt some kind of rebellion? What group of alpha males would be so mesmerised by the sound and sight of Roxane Coss that they would all, every one, fall in love and become passive and content to live there for ever? I did wonder if this was an allusion to the Siren, beguiling all who hear her song — but no, there was nothing sinister or complex about it. I longed for real detail about how everyone managed for weeks without a change of underwear, or how the single intermediary managed to get enough food into the house each day to feed all the captives and their captors for so long. Or what they all did all day, because I couldn't believe they were all content to just stare out of the window looking at the scenery: not for months on end. Nothing about the book felt authentic to me. Not the setting in some unnamed South American country which is vaguely ridiculed. Not the characters, not the way they are reported as interacting with each other. Imagine my astonishment when, after I'd finished, I discovered that it was based on real events in Lima in 1996. Someone in the book group wondered whether Bel Canto is supposed to be understood like an opera. An implausible plot that exists only to offer opportunities for big emotions and arias. Characters who react unrealistically. A lack of everyday detail. A chorus of male hostages wh...

I kept thinking: it will get better. It will make me care. Or laugh. Or be sad. Or anything. But it doesn't. It's so boring it doesn't even inspire a 1-star review, which would suggest it caught me enough to think it was terrible. But it's just mundane, nothing. Don't waste your time or your money. Even our library doesn't bother to carry it. Btw, I love opera. So that’s not the reason.

If all you do is read the plot summary of this book—in an unnamed South American country, terrorists storm the birthday party of a Japanese electronics executive in a botched attempt to kidnapped that country's president—you would never know that this exceptional book by Ann Patchett is actually about friendship and love. Katsumi Hosokawa is turning 53, not a particularly notable birthday, and in a bald faced attempt to entice him to build a factory in this backwater country, the government throws him a lavish birthday party at the opulent home of the vice president. The only reason Hosokawa agrees to attend is that the evening's entertainment is his favorite opera singer, the world-renowned Roxane Coss. But terror and fear reign when armed gunmen storm the house and take hostage well over 100 people from a myriad of countries, who speak a myriad of languages. The standoff lasts for months, and during that time the hostages and their captors eventually form what could be described as a near utopia. Magnificently written with vividly drawn characters, this book is pure genius. The prose is so breathtaking in spots that it is almost poetic, while the storytelling—told individually from many characters' point of view—is absolutely superb. This book is a real treasure. Bonus: The epilogue qualifies as a surprise ending—but one that also makes total sense.