Book Review - Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
In an embassy in an unnamed Latin American country, the world renowned opera singer Roxanne Coss is performing arias to a rapt audience of dignitaries. Watching and listening is her number one fan, a Japanese business tycoon called Katsumi Hosokawa. In the midst of the applause, suddenly the lights go out.
A group of armed guerrillas/revolutionaries stream into the house, taking everyone hostage. They're immediately disappointed when they realise the president, their prized target, isn’t there. He's at home watching his favourite soap opera, which he couldn't bear to miss.
What follows is the story of how this group of hostages and guerillas get to learn to live alongside one another, even becoming friends. We also see the cultural differences between this international group, in a book that could be described as a mixture of farce, drama and romantic comedy.
Beautiful Singing and Opera
‘Bel Canto’ means beautiful singing, and much of the book is inspired by the love of Opera, which many of the guests enjoy. The story itself moves from high drama to romantic comedy, farce to tragedy.
All of the action takes place in the spatial residence of the vice president, and all we hear of the outside world are the occasional sounds from army megaphones, whilst a Swiss negotiator moves back and forth between the two parties with a list of demands. There are plenty of nooks and back staircases in the house, allowing relationships to flourish in secret.
Commonwealth
I found it difficult to get engaged with this book, I just wasn’t involved with it. It became a bit of an effort to read it, and it took me nearly a month to finish it as I could only manage a couple of pages per day. Maybe it was the revolving carousel of characters (I struggled to tell who was who in the guerrilla group) or that I found the farcical nature of it annoying. I really enjoyed 'Commonwealth' by Ann Patchett and it's a much different work than that, but I was disappointed with this.
One of the things that irked me was the shifting narrators voice, which I believe is known as omniscient third person narrator. This means that the narrative voice would shift between characters, often on the same page, and I found this disrupted the flow for me.
There's a lot to like here too, such as the crowd pleasing progress of Cesar and one of my favourite momments was the Russian Hostage and his (can't remember his name) declaration of love to Roxanne, which made me smile. And the message is nice, that people from different backgrounds and culture can unite through music, even if there is a bit of stockholm syndrome going on.
Bel Canto Summary
Eventually, I became more involved as the hostages developed relationships with their captors, especially the translator and Carmen. It's definately not without its momments of humour and occasionally moving, and is exceptionally written as you'd expect with a book by Ann Patchett.
You could say it’s structured like opera, as it builds to a crescendo which wasn’t a surprise, but the epilogue for me was a bit of a head scratcher. I get that loss brings people together, but still. It felt more like a story from one of the presidents favourite soap operas.
Ultimately this wasn’t a book I really enjoyed. It happens. Sometimes a book, even one by an author you previously liked, just doesn't chime with you. It won't put me off reading further books by Ann Patchett. but I was glad to finally finish this one.
318 pages, Paperback
First published May 22, 2001