I read this so long ago that I did not feel qualified to discuss it in detail. I do recall that I liked it a lot. I tried to find it at our various and sundry libraries, before the discussion, with no such luck. I did not wish to buy it and my friend had given away the copy I had borrowed.BTW, I thought the ending was appropriate.

I don't know if one was ever chosen as THE October discussion. However, I have a few thoughts about Bel Canto.

I had BIG problems with the book. I just didn't like it. In the first place, I have never understood the adoration of a STAR. Be it Elvis, Johnny Cash or an opera diva. The concept of being a fan of a singer is something beyond me. Therefore, the concept of how wonderful this woman is because of the beauty of her voice is a false one for me. I didn't see her as a real person beyond The Voice.

Second, perhaps because I do sing, I just don't like the Bel Canto style of singing or the very high Soprano voice. So the book left me with a leading character that I just didn't like on any level. She seemed totally artificial.

Then the guy marries her. But it seems more like a marriage of convenience than love. Maybe at that point, I was just barely struggling to finish the book, but I thought the "love" story was contrived and false. Maybe I missed a lot because I simply didn't understand the feeling that the characters had for the singer.
Aggie

Sorry about my typo in the heading!

I'm no fan of opera but I do understand some people's near adoration of musical greats. I thought it was okay for Roxanne to be one-dimensional, I think many great artists have little time or interest outside their own discipline, which becomes consuming. And I thought the scenes of everyone being caught up in her singing were quite powerful. I can imagine that voice wafting through the house and creating a spell that took both captives and captors to a special place in their heads that lifted them out of the reality of their situation.

SPOILERS AHEAD But, there were other things that bothered me a lot. The first one was that there is a spoiler on page 13!
"It was the unspoken belief of everyone who was familiar with this organization and with the host country that they were a ll as good as dead, when in fact it was the terrorists who would not survive the ordeal."
Why would an author tell me that right at the beginning of the story? It was hard to care much about them when I knew the outcome. I know there are books that have a narrator who speak across time about an event that makes the outcome known; i.e. the narrator is in jail and they are telling about a murder, but there is no narrator here and she has just revealed the fate of half her characters, for no good reason!

I think that's why I originally stopped reading, or actually, listening to this book the first time. I did become more engaged with the characters this time but I was angry about knowing that none of La Familia would survive. And I did not like the fact that all of the captors were so passive and stupid about the situation. Granted the event did not happen the way they planned but surely one of them would have been doing something besides waiting for the other side to come in and capture them. Is Patchett a flak for the right? Does she think that all guerrillas are idiots?

SPOILERS...SO BEWARE:

I loved Bel Canto, and what I found to be so interesting is that I didn't really consider Patchett's admission that the terrorists would not survive to be a spoiler. In fact, what I found to be amazing was that her writing had such a way of drawing me into the story that I allowed myself to ignore the fact that these people would not survive and found myself saddened when they didn't.

As a musician, I completely understand how someone of Roxanne's talent would inspire awe in her adoring public and how she would become so accustomed to it that she would eventually feel entitled to it. At first, she was not likable at all to me, but eventually her humanity broke through.

I don't feel that Patchett's intent was to portray the guerillas as idiots any more than her intent was to portray the captives as spineless cowards. After all, they could have escaped easily many times. Far from insinuating that the captors were idiots, I believe she showed them as being vulnerable and even innocent, caught up in circumstances and political agendas.

From my perspective, I also believed she was showing how quickly our surroundings become comfortable and how easily we fall into a pattern and routine, no matter what the circumstances. The captors and the captives formed their own society. That society became their reality and their world. It became comfortable to them, maybe even preferable to their real lives, and that's why I wasn't surprised by the ending. I felt that when Roxanne and the translator married in the end, they were trying to recapture or hold onto what they felt during the captivity.

Most of all, I did not view this novel as an indictment of terrorism or government. It's not a thriller or action novel. I saw it more as a character study and how those characters interacted when their lives came down to revolving around one setting with no contact with the outside world. To some people, that would be heaven, and this is what I think the captives and the captors began to feel.

This book is loosely based on a real incident in Peru during the mid-90s. Rebels stormed the Japanese Embassy during a party and initially took several hundred people hostage-eventually they let many of the "unimportant" people go, but kept some of the dignitaries for months. It ended when government troops stormed the Embassy, inadvertently killing one of the hostages, and ALL the rebels. I felt that when she said on page 13 that they wouldn't survive, it was just a realistic assessment of the situation-how often do the hostage takers survive? I can't think of one example where they were successful in acheiving all they demanded AND in walking out alive and free. They are dead before they walk in, no matter how long they hold the hostages.

ccr, thanks for bringing up the Peru incident, I was just about to. I think knowing that (in fact remembering vividly watching it on tv) got me very interested in the book.

I did like this book, in fact loved it. I loved the writing and the characters, I loved how she incorporated love of music and how it effects everyone (I am not an opera fan but didn't need to be to understand how that music moved people) I even didn't mind the ending - it wasn't what I wanted, but when you think about it, the two people who got together are the two people who shared an experience that wouldn't be understood by anyone else. And they survived it together.

BTW, not sure if this makes a difference or not - I read this book soon after it came out, and that was before 9/11. In the book the rebels are portrayed rather sympathetically. I wonder - did the attack on us change our perspective of 'rebels' 'hostage takers' 'freedom fighters' 'terrorists' (choose your own term) When I read the book, they were rebels with a cause who wanted to make a statement, not nec hurting anyone. They became real people in this book, not just some faceless unknown terror. But after 9/11, and for me after the massacre of the innocents in Russia by Chechnian rebels, I am not sure I could read the book with the same eye.

color, your post above was excellent, esp as it mirrors my opinions of the book :)

> I also believed she was showing how quickly our surroundings become comfortable and how easily we fall into a pattern and routine. The captors and the captives formed their own society. That society became their reality and their world.

Isn't there a term for thisl, something like the Stockholm Syndrome, where the hostages become sympathetic with the hostage takers cause? It has happened more than once and I don't think it out of place here at all.

And now you guys are making me want to reread this book...

I think she did a really good job with the aspects of the Stockholm Syndrome. And I did like most of her characters. But I didn't buy the passivity of the rebel leaders.

I wouldn't have been upset or surprized by all the rebels dying, but I really didn't want to know it right at the begining. I would have gotten closer to the characters if I hadnt known that they were all doomed.

And I didn't accept the ending. It seemed too pat. I prefer to think the translator character would re-make himself after the experience with his guerilla. But I did love the image of that voice drifting through the rooms.

I don't think either the translator or the opera singer could do anything but what they did. He wasn't really interested in remaking himself-his affair started as he tried to help the little girl remake herself.
The relationships they had developed while in the house were so overwhelming, so out of the ordinary, so intense, that only by holding on to each other could they begin to move on. Remember that her lover, the Japanese businessman opera fan, died shielding his lover-the little girl guerilla-and in neither case did the translator or the opera singer have the opportunity to publicly grieve in the normal way. Except with each other, everything had to be kept inside and hidden. The businessman had a family that the opera singer did not want to hurt, and the translator could not lose face by admitting to his family he had had an affair with a guerilla peasant girl. They needed each other. They were both emotionally scarred.

going up for granjan

I read this before 9/11 and I remember thinking that it demonstrated how unfocused and undirected terrorism was. 9/11 certainly ended that perspective!

I loved this book and I'm not an opera fan. I find most soprano voices distressing. ( Leontyne Price being the exception.) I liked the view of the discipline needed and the insight into what others find so thrilling. The ending discombobulated me, and while I see how a bond would form that transcends all others, I still think it is a stretch as far as satisfying (not happy-satisfying but closure-satisfying) endings go.

Im another non opera fan (and have the same distaste for sopranos, esp the ones who do children's music CDs!). But I was able to extrapolate from this to other music that has moved and changed me. The ending - I have to agree with ccr, it really was the only way it could end. I couldn't imagine either of those two being able to keep a relationship with anyone else. Both carry way too much emotional baggage. Tho thinking it again - this could be a marriage made in hell, I dunno

BTW did anyone notice how much time, clocks, and watches were mentioned? And that the negotiator was Swiss? Its been ages since I read it, and remember thinking that interesting, but I can't remember what conclusion I came up with - that time stopped for them?