Bel Canto (Holiday Reading)

The novel Bel Canto by Ann Patchett is a tragic, yet romantic story of a South American hostage situation. These are not the usual kinds of books that I would choose, but I actually enjoyed reading this. This is the kind of book that you can read and enjoy while it also contains literary merit. It is fiction and has a grasping story line but it also has the in between the lines ideas that you can discover and go into more depth of. It starts off the book describing a party where a performance just ended and then a passionate kiss in the dark. As the book continues on, we find that it is actually a terrorist attack were everyone is held hostage. In the home of vice president, Ruben Iglesias, there is a birthday party that is being hosted for Mr. Hosokawa. Mr. Hosokawa is a very powerful businessman who loves everything about opera. When his daughter, Kiyomi introduces him to Roxanne Coss by accident, he falls in love. For his birthday performance he is very excited to find that she is their entertainment for the night. According to him she just has the most beautiful soprano voice he has ever heard.
After the terrorists fail at their attempt to invade the party and take the president, they are kind of stuck in a situation they are not really sure what to do with. Since the president chose not to attend the party and was not there to take, the terrorists did not really have another plan. They did not have any intentions of killing anyone, but they felt that they couldn’t just let everyone leave so they kept them and tried to slowly let people leave. First they let all the women leave except for Roxanne and then they started to interview people and see whom they needed. In order to do this they find that they need a translator. Mr. Hosokawa’s translator, Gen then steps in and becomes probably the most valuable person at the party. At the start of all this, the people were scared but as the story moves on relationships were formed. It changes from a scenario of a perfect evening that is ruined by a life-threatening experience back to a thing of beauty. Throughout the book, as the terrorists and hostages spend more time together, they begin to form a bond that seems inseparable. They obtain friendships, new love interests, and lifelong acquaintances. The most amazing and beautiful part of this scenario is that all these people are from different parts of the world and speak different languages. Even with all of their language and cultural barriers they are still able to work with each other to learn to love and care for one another.
The author of this book, Ann Patchett started out as a young girl wanting to become a writer. As she grew up she was introduced to many opportunities. She sold her first story to The Paris Review where it was published before she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. From there she continued to write and publish in renowned pieces of literature (newspapers, books, magazines, etc.) With her novel, Bel Canto she was awarded the Pen/Faulkner Award. It was also a New York Times Bestseller. She has also won the Orange Prize and the Nashville Banner Tennessee Writer of the Year Award for some of her other works.
I really enjoyed reading this book and would definitely recommend it to others to read. Although it is a romance novel, it also is kind of a drama and keeps you interested and wanting to read on. Bel Canto is a novel that is written in third person suspense. Due to this, it helps you to want to continue to read on. It also has a good, easy to read story line that you can just read and enjoy while at the same time it helps you to obtain new literary understanding. After reading this book and talking to Mr. Lavender, I found that this book is actually based upon a real event. There was a Peruvian terrorist attack that occurred much like this one that Ann Patchett found interesting and based her writing upon that. Now that I know that, I would really like to look into that and compare the two circumstances. This is a very good book that I would recommend to someone who wants a quick read while also getting something out of it.