| Qty | Store | Section |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Local Warehouse | Literature- P |
| Hide store locations | ||
|
|
|
About This Book
ISBN13: 9780060188733 |
Powells.com Staff Pick
The government of a small South American country holds a birthday party for the head of Japan's leading electronics manufacturer, hoping to attract its business. Mr. Hosokawa, they know, can't resist the opportunity of a private performance by the world's leading soprano, Roxanne Coss. But it's not Hosokawa or Coss the terrorists want. The guerrillas who raid the party are after the country's president. Unfortunately, they quickly learn that he skipped the soiree to watch his favorite soap opera. Upon successfully storming the building, the naïve rebels find their kidnapping attempt foiled, and they don't know what to do.
As Patchett's new novel opens, fifty-seven men, eighteen terrorists, and one remarkable opera singer begin their new life behind the closed doors of the vice presidential mansion. Inspired by the four-month-long, 1996 Peruvian hostage crisis, Bel Canto "is ninety-eight percent fiction," the author says. Roxane Coss was her idea.
"Soon enough," Patchett writes, "the days were divided into three states: the anticipation of her singing, the pleasure of her singing, and the reflection on her singing."
The New Yorker raved, "Patchett's tragicomic novel — a fantasia of guns and Puccini and Red Cross negotiations — invokes the glorious, unreliable promises of art, politics and love. Against this grand backdrop, the smallest gestures bloom with meaning." As Laura Miller concluded in a review for Salon.com, "Patchett makes it work, completely."
Recommended by Dave
Review-a-Day (What is Review-a-Day?)
"There are quite a few improbable aspects to Bel Canto, but the handful of times when I found my head popping above the surface of Patchett's novel to catch a quick lungful of realism — is it really possible that among a group of 57 assorted men there wouldn't be one opera hater or homosexual? — I was promptly sucked back under the surface by the book's bewitching undertow. This is a story of passionate, doomed love; of the glory of art; of the triumph of our shared humanity over the forces that divide us, and a couple of other unbearably cheesy themes, and yet Patchett makes it work, completely." Laura Miller, Salon.com (click here to read the entire Salon.com review)
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Without the demands of the world to shape their days, life on the inside becomes more beautiful than anything they had ever known before. At once riveting and impassioned, the narrative becomes a moving exploration of how people communicate when music is the only common language. Friendship, compassion, and the chance for great love lead the characters to forget the real danger that has been set in motion and cannot be stopped.
Ann Patchett has written a novel that is as lyrical and profound as it is unforgettable. Bel Canto engenders in the reader the very passion for art and the language of music that its characters discover. As a reader, you find yourself fervently wanting this captivity to continue forever, even though you know that real life waits on the other side of the garden wall. Bel Canto is a virtuoso performance by one of our best and most important writers. It is a novel to be cherished.
Review:
Review:
Review:
Review:
Review:
Review:
Synopsis:
Synopsis:
Synopsis:
Somewhere in South America, at home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of a powerful Japanese businessman. A famous American opera diva entertains the international guests. It is a night out of a fairytale — until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario turns into something quite different — as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds...people from different countries and continents become compatriots...and passionate, ill-fated love blooms upon this unlikely soil.
What Our Readers Are Saying
Be the first to add a comment for a chance to win!
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780060188733
- Author:
- Publisher:
- HarperCollins
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- Opera
- Subject:
- Love stories
- Subject:
- Women singers
- Subject:
- Hostages
- Subject:
- General Fiction
- Edition Number:
- 1st
- Publication Date:
- June 2001
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- General/trade
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 336
- Dimensions:
- 9.76x6.39x1.19 in. 1.20 lbs.
