Average Rating: 
Rating: - Terrorist Utopia
You'll read Bel Canto and get caught up in the development of some unusual and captivating relationships all with a sense of doom. A hostage taking just can not end well but you'll find yourself praying that it will.In some third world South American country guerillas have taken over the Vice President's home and end up keeping 60+ V.I.P.'s and one internationally famous soprano hostage for four months. Incredibly, they begin to build a routine that becomes almost utopian for some of the terrorists and hostages alike. Patchett took her inspiration from the real hostage taking at the Japanese Embassy in Peru six years ago which also lasted about four months. I like her interpretation that human beings will try to make a sense of home wherever they are if they are there long enough and I wish I could find out more about what the experience was for the real hostages. Bel Canto is not great literature but it is a compelling read, I recommend it highly as a book club read.
Rating:  - Are you all in another dimension? This book was terrible!
I was completely disappointed. The unlikeliness of the hostage situation, the sheer boredom of the novel until at least page 200 and then the hideous ending...Truly not worth the read.
Rating:  - Good beginning come to a bad end...
I didn't read this book, I devoured it. I did notice the grammatical impenetrability of some of the prose - perhaps I was just being kind but I attributed that to the writer's desire to make the style somewhat breathless, even as the events she was describing could get to be.I fell for the whole thing, hook, line and sinker. I loved these people. I wanted them to be okay. I found the story engaging, the soprano indomitable (aren't we all?), and the music handled perfectly. That's where the bad end part comes in. After some two hundred pages of build-up, during which we begin to feel like we know these characters, the ending is bundled up and off-stage in about four pages, leaving me feeling a little like I got the bum's rush. I just wanted MORE...I was left entirely unsatisfied by the author's uncomprising butchery of the terrorists, along with perhaps the best-loved of the hostages. I was left more than unsatisfied by her refusal to follow up on ANY of the others except Gen, Roxane, and Simon. And I was utterly mystified by the marriage of Gen and Roxane; it just made no sense to me at all, partly because I was given no context for it. So I do recommend this because there is much to love - but prepare to be disappointed in the end.
| 
