Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

 

"But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn. He managed to forget that Carmen was a soldier in the organization that had kidnapped him."

    -from the novel

I can't remember who among our group of Page Turners suggested this novel. I didn't think I was going to like it at first but I ended up being intrigued by its unique plot. I have given a rating of 4.

To start, there is a birthday party being held for an important Japanese businessman, Katsumi Hosokawa, in the home of the vice president of an unknown South American country. In attendance are many international VIPs and a famous opera star, Roxane Coss, and her accompanist who have been hired to provide the entertainment. Suddenly a group of guerillas, La Familia de Martin Suarez, "crash the party"! When they discover El Presidente, whom they planned to kidnap, is not in attendance, they decide to hold all the guests as hostages. The people are detained for months while the terrorist generals refuse to negotiate except to allow most of the women to leave. They keep the singer. Fortunately, it did not seem they were badly treated.

There were so many interesting characters besides the ones already mentioned----Gen, Hosokawa's aide and interpreter, a priest, a Red Cross mediator who is allowed to come and go and the host Vice President Iglesias. Plus the reader gets to know several of the soldiers, two of whom are young women.

I was struck by this review from New York magazine:

 "The author has taken what could have been a variation on The Lord of the Flies scenario and fashions instead a 'Lord of the Butterflies,' a dreamlike fable in which impulses toward beauty and love are shown to be as irrepressible as the instincts for violence and destruction...In more ways than one, Bel Canto is about finding beauty in unexpected places."    

 I will find out soon what others of the group think about this unusual story. More then...

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I predicted the rating would be below 3 but I was wrong.  The group average was 3.4. There were actually 10 ratings of 4 or 5 and only 4 votes of 1 or 2. Not many were on the fence---we either liked it or we didn't! 

Almost everyone enjoyed at least a few of the characters. Those who knew more about opera seemed to like the novel more. Some found the novel tedious, but when we thought about it, being a hostage WOULD by definition be tedious. Some found it unbelievable. Several, like me, didn't like it at first but then it "grew" on us. We liked how people in a bad situation kept looking for the bright side.

As always, the discussion rated a 5!