Ninth Book: Ann Patchett´s ¨Bel Canto¨

I grabbed Ann Patchett´s ¨Bel Canto¨ from the bookshelf in Quetzaltrekkers. I finished it in five days. Reading it reminded me just how much joy I derive from reading. There´s a reason I enjoy virtually everything I read. The simple act alone is one of the great pleasures of my life.

Patchett´s story is about a state dinner party held in an South American country that gets taken over by terrorists. During the prolonged standoff, which lasts a few months, the terrorists and hostages (who all come from different lands and speak different languages) forge many surprising bonds. Feelings of friends, family, and even love springs up between them.

Patchett is adept at creating this world for the reader, and as I read little seemed implausible in her world. Rather, I loved the development of the characters, learning how they grow and change. They share a confined space, the mansion belonging to the Vice-President, and without fully realizing it, they share something of themselves as well.

This book ponders language and love, it explores desire and motives, and it deals with the idea of what it means for a person to forget or to remember. The reality of the characters change, and they end up in places that they never imagined.

Mr. Hosokawa had a private life now. He had always thought of himself as a private man, but now he saw that there was nothing in his life before that had been private. It didn´t mean that he had no secrets then and now he did. It was that now there was something that was strictly between himself and one other person, that it was so completely their own that it would have been pointless to even try to speak of it to someone else.
...
But he understood that these were extraordinary times, and if their old life was ever restored to them, nothing would be the same.
...
Maybe the private life wasn´t forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.

My favorite character in the book was the Japanese translator, Gen Watanbe, who happens speak virtually every language present at the dinner party. Yet over the course of that time something happens to Gen that he never expected. All of the characters like Gen, perhaps because he translated their words so smoothly that the speakers sometimes forgot his existence. It seems to me it is much the same with Patchett: She presents such a charming world, with so many desires and personality, that often the reader takes for granted the slight of hand necessary in creating such a story.