Bel Canto in The Dusty Bookshelf

Jun 08, 2013 Casey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: the-serious-lit

Bel Canto is a strange little novel: a page turner in which not much really happens, a melodrama that's psychological and character driven. In short, an unnamed Southern American country holds a birthday party for a Japanese businessman, complete with an American opera singer. Terrorists take over the party and hold everyone hostage. The novel deals with the hostage situation.

But, even with this sketchy outline of the plot of the novel, it won't be what you would expect. I was incredibly surpris ...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Sara rated it it was amazing

Shelves: postcolonial, faves, re-read, 2007, 2018

I first fell in love with Ann Patchett and her writing a little over 10 years ago, the first month in my first apartment in Nashville, reading Bel Canto on the futon I borrowed from my parents. While my 2007-2008 reading years were extraordinarily good ones, I have never before or since been so motivated to go out and read an author's entire work. There's something about these characters (and all of her characters, really) that touches me deeply. Ann writes about the effects of oppression and gr ...more

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Mar 27, 2010 Suey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: all-time-favorites

I loved it just as much the second time around.

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Jun 15, 2012 Beth rated it it was ok

Shelves: first-reads-and-early-reviews

BEL CANTO by Ann Patchett sounds promising at first. Patchett writes beautifully, leading her reader to believe that her description of a large, formal birthday party held at the home of the vice president of some South American country is the beginning of an engrossing story.

When terrorists interrupt the party, though, fantasy begins. It's not so bad being a hostage in Patchett's story. Over the several weeks that the terrorists keep their hostages in the vice president's home, some of them, b ...more

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Oct 23, 2007 Avanders rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction-and-literature, favorites, drama, featured

Wonderful wonderful wonderful. The author does a magnificent job with characterization and a fictional retelling of an event (the hostage crisis in Peru in the late 90s). I highly recommend this book.

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