When terrorists seize hostages at an embassy party, an unlikely assortment of people is thrown together, including American opera star Roxanne Coss, and Mr. Hosokawa--a Japanese CEO and her biggest fan.
I fell in love with Ann Patchett’s writing with her first novel The Magician’s Assistant. Bel Canto is an operatic term for beautiful singing. Patchett received the idea to write this novel after hearing about the Lima Peru hostage crisis in 1996. This crisis which lasted for months had an almost an operatic feel about it with its high drama according to Patchett. The novel would win the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It was named as one of Amazons Best Books of the Year and adapted into an opera. It was made into a film starring Julianne Moore.
The story revolves around a Japanese embassy in a South American country that is hosting an event honoring famed Japanese businessman Katsumi Hosokawa. He is an avid lover of an opera and the famed singer Roxane Coss will be performing. A group of terrorists storm the embassy expecting to take the President who isn’t there. They take the guests hostage. During this crisis romantic relationships develop between Ms. Coss and the Japanese businessman as well as the translator Gen and a female terrorist. There is a language barrier between Roxane and Katsume which makes that relationship even more interesting to watch as it develops. While the hostage situation occurs, time almost stands still and the author’ s style of magic realism really comes into play. The author wrote her previous novels as a first person narrator and in this book she uses a omniscient third person narrator that explores many character’s stories. Her characters are endearing and the beautifully romantic interactions with the book's main figures are engaging and lyrical. By novel's end, there will be deaths and tragedy but positive good does comes from these events. This story proves that love can bloom in the most unlikeliest of places between individuals of completely different backgrounds. Its character development plus its action are well done but the novel does drag a bit in the beginning. It is definitely one of Ms. Patchett's most endearing works. - Van, Reference Librarian