Bel Canto

By Ann Patchett

Book Overview

NYT Bestseller

A major motion picture starring Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe.

"Blissfully romantic....A strange, terrific, spellcasting story." -- San Francisco Chronicle

"Bel Canto...should be on the list of every literate music lover. The story is riveting, the participants breathe and feel and are alive, and throughout this elegantly-told novel, music pours forth so splendidly that the reader hears it and is overwhelmed by its beauty." --Lloyd Moss, WXQR

Ann Patchett's award winning Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Patchett's other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician's Assistant, the author'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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060188731
• ISBN13: 9780060188733
• Release Date: May 2001
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

I loved this book

It was a tense but enjoyable book, I cried at the end but really was okay. I really liked the book.

Enchanting - Brilliant - Deep

This was beautifully written. To say it was to slow would be like saying, “I like to wolf down my food.” The relationships were intimately crafted, it was easy to imagine being captive with the characters, I had a clear vision of the setting (it was brilliant). I was completely enchanted with Ann Patchett’s writing.

Not about singing

I found this a tedious read & couldn’t finish. It’s focus on the military elements & capture went on ad nauseam. This book is mis titled & really not about singing.

Beautiful descriptions but unfolds SOOOOOooooo slowly

I LOVE Ann Patchett. I have read all but one of her books. This book was such a struggle. It was written so beautifully I could feel the carpet, taste the food, hear the music! But it was sooo slow that I had to push until the end and then it was so rushed it was over before I knew what happened. I think you have to be in a certain mood to read this and if you are, it's fabulous. Otherwise, you keep checking how many pages are left.

What writing. The characters are real and come to life before your eyes. As I read I wanted to be th

Alive

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I am only about halfway through but I believe the book is brilliant. How Ann Patchett came up with the idea is interesteing for me to know. It can't be part of her experience so it is a result of a great mnid and fertile imagination along with lots of wisdom about music and language.

Ann Patchett Is Phenomenal

This is such an interesting, textured novel and study of the human experience. Loved every page!

Spell-binding plot

Bel Canto is probably the most perfect novel I've read in years. Beautifully written, with a spell-binding plot that will hold you till the last page (and then you'll wish for more), filled with interesting characters, thought-provoking hostage situation--I can almost guarantee you'll be thinking about it for days after reading it.

Wonderful, compelling read

I loved this book. Beautifully written, gripping from beginning to end and full of surprises. Highly recommended.

Beautiful Book

This book is about a hostage situation in a third world country. Random but important guests are held at the vice president's house by terrorists. The author manages to put so much beauty into this seemingly horrifying scenario. The reader can not help but feel empathy toward her characters. I was honestly moved by the book. I will be keeping this book to read again and again. Highly recommended.

Beautiful!

"Bel Canto" is a beautifully written story of unlikely love and secret desires. Do not be put off by the barebones plot--a group of people at a party taken hostage by South American terrorists. And do not think you are in for a routine "put a bunch of strangers in a room and then learn their life stories" sort of saga. Patchett gathers together a group that spans nationalities, professions and class and reveals the hidden depths, sometimes in a few short pages, through their interactions with each other. Take the Russian minister of commerce--portrayed as something of a buffoon who has fallen in love with Roxane, the opera singer. He screws up his courage to declare himself--which must be done through Gen, the translator. What he says to her is completely unexpected--a wonderful story of his childhood and an art book. He declares himself a man who appreciates beauty and therefore worthy to love her, and asks nothing in return. Meanwhile we see into the heart of Gen the translator, as he awkwardly acts as intermediary he realizes he has never told anyone that he loves them, not a woman, not family, not his mother--he feels as if his life has been to act as a conduit for the thoughts and feelings of others, that he has never experienced a real life of his own. Then there is the relationship of Mr. Hosokawa and Roxane, who do not share a common language. Is it possible to love a person to whom you cannot speak? I loved the transformation of the characters that occurs--the Vice President of the country dreams of adopting one of the young terrorists and becoming a gardener, another terrorist uncovers his great gift as a singer, a buttoned up Japanese businessman becomes Roxane's accompianist, the young priest becomes a gifted and courageous spiritual counselor. The Generals become human too, worrying about their young soldiers as a close relative might worry about a child, and regretting recruiting them for this operation that has gone terribly wrong.Like the hostages themselves, we get lulled by the harmony and unreality of life within the compound, yet as time passes Patchett delicately conveys a sense of impending doom through the Swiss Red Cross mediator, who himself longs to become a hostage after seeing the community that has been created within the walls of the Vice President's house. Patchett tells us at the beginning of the story what the end will be, and yet creates an aura of suspense as we realize that dreams of the future will never be fulfilled. There is a surprise ending here that I wasn't sure rang true, but the book stands without it--a wonderful novel!

Hope, Possibilities, and Beauty

"It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how." Although this simple sentence appears near the end of Ann Patchett's beautiful and brilliant "Bel Canto", it aptly sums up the whole of this excellent story. With the daunting task of setting the entire story in the sometimes-home of a South American Vice President, Patchett breathes wonderful life into a cast of characters put into unusual and tense surroundings. When the birthday celebration of a Japanese businessman becomes the hostile battleground for a group of renegade terrorists, the party's attendees become the unwilling cast which Patchett moves deftly through their paces. Although the claustrophobic setting of this story would seem off-putting, Patchett takes this chance to explore the endless possibilities of the human heart within the strict confines of its captive surroundings, giving her novel the illusion of breathtaking expansiveness and of being totally boundless.This is one of those rare books which one is loathe to put down, yet reluctant to read quickly, for the pure joy of reading the poetically written emotions and perfectly worded sentences. I found that I could only read one page per sitting, so badly did I want to savor it's exquisite flavors. Count me in as a new advocate of Ann Patchett!