Sour notes.

Bel Canto is one of those novels that just seem to keep popping up in reviews, 'best' lists and conversations about literary fiction. Since its publication in 2001, the winner of the PEN/Faulkner, Orange and National Book Critics Circle awards kept reappearing on my list of books that I needed to read, so transcendent was its beauty, its themes haunting and its story meaningful on so many levels. Plus, there was the added benefit of opera as one of its subjects--a topic near to my heart.

So I've read it, and try as I might, I cannot say that I especially liked the book. I agree that Patchett's writing is beautiful: her exploration of art and its bonding essence in a microcosm that has all the beauty and fragility of the sheen on a bubble. But the centerpiece of all this beauty, the catalyst really, never struck me as genuine. Maybe it's something of a disingenuous argument to say that this art is built on sometime that can only be called an artifice. But when the entire premise of the book is to suggest that art, the creation of human beings, can suspend and overcome the divisions so pervascent in humanity, to build the entire plot on a rather unbelievable human character undermines the whole endeavor.

The central character that I'm talking about is Roxanne Coss, world-renowned soprano. She is at the vice presidental mansion of a nameless South American nation for the lavish party of a Mr. Hosokawa, opera lover and wealthy businessman. Wooed to the country in hopes that he will help jumpstart the economy, the wealthy and powerful gather to celebrate the man who almost no one knows, or, aside from his money, particularly cares for. When a radical group storms the house and takes the guests captive, both captors and hostages alike are entranced by Coss' ethereal voice. Soon, the vice president is tending to the cleaning of the house, the rebel generals are meeting for chess in the study, and more than one hostage is getting to know their captors quite well.



There's only one possible ending to all of this, and when it comes, it's still a remarkable moment. But it would be more so if I could really connect with the characters. Patchett is a great writer, but I think Bel Canto could really have been masterpiece with more attention paid to the main character. In the end, Bel Canto had its moments (the story of Mr. Hosokawa's translator being the best), but I couldn't help but feel some disappointment in its closing passages.