Rating: ⭐⭐⭐I heard remarkable things about this book. Since it's the recipient of both the Orange Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, I went into it expecting to be wowed. I'm loath to say I wasn't. Is this a beautiful book with some of the most detailed, life-like characters? Yes. Was it as wildly remarkable as I thought it would be? Sadly, no. I think, for me, it came down to believability and perhaps a lack of experience at the opera. Overall an enjoyable read, but I would say it's definitely for a discerning individual.
[SPOILERS BELOW]
[SPOILERS BELOW]
Bel Canto asks the question: "what would we all be like if we forgot our status, our privilege, our pains, our histories and simply existed together with no outside influences?" It seeks to highlight the humanity that lies in us all, the thing that binds us all together no matter how we strain against it.
Overview:
The story is set in a Vice President's mansion, in South America, at a birthday party for a prominent Japanese businessman. When guerilla fighters descend on the evening and take everyone hostage in hopes of making demands for 'the people' but find their key hostage is not even in attendance, things come to a screeching halt. The party ends, the takeover stalls, the rescue efforts are nonexistent. Everyone just sits in this house, suspended, it seems, in time indefinitely.
General Impressions:
I think my main complaint about the book is its believability. The fact that a group of guerilla fighters come into a mansion and people soon start falling in love, and forming bonds, and friendships and attachments over the course of a couple months just seems improbable for me. I'm all for suspending my belief, but try as I might, I had a hard time doing so.
My second issue was with the pacing. The cover boasts a "spellbinding" novel and that description is apt. I did find myself almost in a trance, wondering where this was all going. I didn't truly get frustrated with the glacial, albeit pleasing, course of events until the last 20 pages, when I was peering around the corner for a resolution and finding none in sight. The writing is beautiful and the characters were extraordinarily life-like but looking back, it's hard to say what happened in several hundred pages. Maybe Pachett really did cast a spell?
The ending seemed inevitably tragic once it happened. I found myself trying to quietly turn a blind eye to the foreshadowing because I really did love these characters and their lives and their dreams. I was rooting for them all. It felt like the cruel rip of duck tape on bare skin in the last TWO pages when all now dearly-loved guerilla fighters are unceremoniously gunned down. No one says goodbye and no one has the chance to advocate for anyone. The ceiling of the book comes crashing down with what feels like zero warning. But when it's over, you wonder how it didn't happen sooner.
The epilogue seemed a bit out-of-the-blue as well. Gen, who loved Carmen, and Roxanne, who loved Mr. Hosokawa, are suddenly getting married after the events of the story. There's really no love written about between then, there's very little interaction at all. They seemed to married for the connection to the ones they had lost, clinging to any tether that was left of them. It's a bit melodramatic for me, especially because there's no precursor for this throughout the book.
Final Thoughts:
Overall, it's a beautiful book for the rich and deeply-human cast of characters that you end up wanting the best for. The descriptions of music are a mastery and the writing is objectively excellent. I'd be interested in reading more of her work for her craft alone.
I did a bit of research after I finished the book, looking for something I might have missed. From what I could tell, Pachett seemed to have constructed the book in homage to a sweeping, dramatic, tragic opera. When looking at it from that lens, I can suspend my belief a bit more but I feel like I should have known that going in or I wouldn't fully appreciate what she's done. A lovely book, but maybe a little more poignancy might have served it better.
