BOOK REVIEW

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. Orange Prize.

(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com)  Bel Canto opens at a dinner party at the mansion of the vice-president of an unnamed South American country. A famous soprano sings for the assembled guests who include several local and foreign dignitaries. At the conclusion of her performance, the house lights go off, leaving everyone in a velvety darkness. Enchanted, they clap madly. Only the French ambassador suddenly intuits that something is wrong.

Terrorists have taken over the house and cut the power.  These are guerilla fighters:  three hard-bitten men who call themselves "the Generals" and a swarm of teenaged peasants.  This ragged army terrifies the shocked guests who find it hard to look up past the hands holding the automatic weapons.  The terrorists reinstate the electricity and scream at everyone to lie down on the floor.

The Generals have made a big mistake.  They had heard that the president would be attending the dinner.  They wanted to take him hostage.  However, at the last minute, the president decided to stay home to watch his favorite soap opera. That now leaves the terrorists with the unimportant vice-president as their highest-ranking prisoner.  Enraged, one of the Generals knocks him, cutting his face.

The narrative slips deftly into several viewpoints as the guests cower on the floor. They are an unusual lot.

The guest of honor is Mr. Hosokawa, a Japanese business tycoon and opera fan.  He reluctantly agreed to attend the dinner in this South American country because his hosts paid a huge sum and hired Roxanne Coss, the finest opera singer in the world, to perform for him. The South Americans hope he will reciprocate by building a factory in their country with which to save their economy.

Mr. Hosokawa comes with his translator Gen who has prodigious linguistic talent. Both men are shy and modest.  Among the other luminaries present are the French ambassador and his wife who are desperately in love with each other. The lowliest guest is a young opera-loving priest who was allowed to lurk in the kitchen to listen to Miss Coss sing.

The terrorists are now stuck with the vice-president and these random celebrities. The next day the police surround the vice-president's mansion. They send in a hostage negotiator, a poor Swiss guy from the Red Cross who had been on vacation.  The terrorists do not even have a coherent list of demands.

However, the Generals decide to release the kitchen staff – they are, after all, supposed to be champions of the proletariat. Then they separate the female guests to one side of the room to let them go. To the clergymen (a monsignor and the young priest), they accord the same courtesy.

This leads to an amusing scene.  The monsignor makes an ostentatious sign-of-the-cross over the male hostages, and then scurries to join the women.  The young priest asks to remain a hostage so that he can minister the rest in their time of crisis. The monsignor starts gnashing his teeth.

But suddenly one of the male hostages dies.  It is Miss Coss's piano player, and he never told anybody that he had diabetes. Rattled, the Generals send the women out to freedom, but hold one back:  Miss Coss herself.

Well, Miss Coss is something of a diva.  She doesn't mind being the only woman in a houseful of males. But wait!  A couple of the boy-terrorists are really girls:  saintly Carmen and saucy Beatriz. 

It is an electrifying beginning to the novel.

However, Bel Canto shifts in a surrealistic direction: days and weeks roll by.  The cops maintain a menacing presence outside the mansion.  (In real life, they would have stormed the place.) 

The mansion becomes a charmed world is populated by a fanciful group of inmates no longer divided into captors and captives.  The teenagers watch television. The Generals play chess with Mr. Hosokawa. Everyone starts to realize his or her potential in an unusual way that has been jolted into existence by the tension of his or her interactions with the others.

Mr. Hosokawa and Gen will each find true love! Miss Coss will become the vastly self-centered sun around which everyone will orbit!  Carmen will learn to read!  The young priest, once deemed too inexperienced to lead mass, will become the spiritual heart of the community! The vice-president will find satisfaction in picking up after everyone like a housekeeper and digging with his bare hands in the garden!  The Russian ambassador will find the courage to declare an abstract platonic love!

Bel Canto turns into a strange novel indeed.  It has too light a touch to be a realistic drama or suspense novel. Its detached quality prevents it from being a comedy.  It is beautifully written despite its predictable ending.  I enjoyed it even though I can't quite classify it, and I definitely recommend it. 

Bel Canto gets four stars out of five.  It can be found on Amazon through this link:

Bel Canto (P.S.)

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