Bel Canto - a Novel: Immersive, magical, real paean about opera and terrorism
Written: Dec 30 '02 (Updated Jul 01 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Immersive, Magical, Real. The power of music, the power of love, to transport you.
Cons: One-dimensional characters. Simplistic episodic plot. Lack of development. Fizzles.
The Bottom Line: Ann Patchett transforms a hostage situation into a musical magical paradise, and thus sucks the reader in. Through rapturous vivid prose, the reader is immersed in Patchett's world.
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| benho's Full Review: Ann Patchett - Bel Canto: A Novel Books |
“When the lights went out, the accompanist kissed her” begins Ann Patchett’s imaginative, magical, enrapturing tale, a portrait really, of what happens when you put 60 strangers, picked to live in a house to find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. Thus just like the seven strangers in MTV's reality phenomenon, “The Real World,” Bel Canto places a cast of extraordinary people in a highly artificial environment, and we get to tag along for the ride. The difference being that instead of feeling like voyeuristic interlopers, we feel we are right there among them.
Before I lose all of you, a more traditional review of this award winning book might begin, in Bel Canto Patchett weaves a spell-binding story of a collection of Powerful and Beautiful people taken hostage by a group of Latin American freedom fighters (or as we would call them today, terrorists). Set in an unnamed though hardly anonymous Latin American country (unless there is more than one country that has a drug problem and a former Japanese president), twenty terrorists take control of the home of vice president Ruben Garcia, who is hosting a birthday party for visiting Japanese dignitary Katsume Hosakawa, (opera obsessed workaholic founder and president of Nansei, a Sony-like conglomerate). The terrorists and the besieging police quickly reach a standoff, and as the days turn into weeks, love blooms, hope springs eternal, and paradise is found. Among the hostages is world renowned soprano Roxanne Coss, whose magical voice helps transform the besieged vice presidential mansion, in which the motley crew of terrorists and hostages find themselves sequestered, into a utopian paradise.
In one of the dust jacket quotes, Patchett’s is described as a writer of “magic realism,” a genre I was at a loss to define until after reading the book. Patchett depicts a world much like our own, one that follows the same laws and the same rules, but pushes the boundaries of what is real, much like 18th century realist painters or the Atget landscape photographs beloved of the surrealists. In Patchett’s world, love can bloom between hostage and terrorist (not only in the Stockholm sense), understanding can develop among people of all stripes, unrequited love can go on being unrequited, and an opera singer’s voice can ensorcel the darkest of hearts.
The opening chapters are narrated with a playful, ironic, teasingly prescient, omniscience. The author merrily shifts focus with all the verve of a Baz Luhrman jump cut, and drops ironical comments like a VH1 Pop-up video. Patchett’s style eventually settles down, perhaps in step with the pacing of events, as the characters settle into their surroundings. What does remain through is a wry humor and a playful use of language, such as the occasional startling use of the first person.
What is truly magical about Patchett’s writing is its immersive quality. As I read, I was sucked in, Matrix-like, into Patchett’s world, its emotions empathetically infused into the reader, from the frenetic introduction, to the intense feeling of violation caused by the intruder, to the rapture induced by Roxanne Coss’ singing. In the book, Coss’ music is described to be indescribably beautiful. “Soon enough the days were divided into three states: the anticipation of her singing, the pleasure of her singing, and the reflection of her singing.” And somehow, what I felt was the same breathless anticipation felt by the characters, waiting desperately for when Roxanne Coss would sing again, hoping to turn the page to find Patchett’s rapturous prose, to once again hear, nay to feel, the power of Coss’ voice.
If one must make a critique, however, it would be the sheer simplicity of it all. The story is a mythic parable of sorts, where the characters are not so much people, as they are types. Coss, the brash, reckless, self-important, egotistical, generous, kind-hearted genius, who is the only American, and personifies America as much as she does music. There is the genius polyglot translator, Gen, whose ability to transcend language barriers makes him key to the book’s theme of the transcendent nature of music. (A cultural sensitivity purists might take offense that music here means only Western-style opera but I am fine with this.) Other characters personify their national heritage, the hard-nosed Russian, the lovelorn French lover. Except for the main characters, each is introduced in his own vignette, much as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Thus there was an interchangeable quality of many of the vignettes that thus implied a lack of growth among the characters.
Thus in this way, the plot lacked depth and complexity. And so too did many of the characters. But all of this matters not, as it is emotions that Patchett most wants to convey. Just as a scratch and sniff sticker allows you to vicariously smell, Bel Canto lets you vicariously feel. Into her ideal and dreamlike, magical and romantic world, we experience the transcendent power of music, and the true source of happiness, peace, love, and understanding. And the true magic of it all comes, because Patchett makes us believe that her world just might be the real one.
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Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
benho
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Member: Ben Ho
Location: New York, NY, USA
Reviews written: 65
Trusted by: 52 members
About Me:
The end (of grad school) is near... off now to teach in cold Ithaca.
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