[There is a black and white photo of a grand piano: it looks sad and comforting at the same time. You can see inside the piano, which could be a metaphor for how this book shows you the inside of the characters, only the piano is more beautiful and meaningful than the characters. #bitter)
Now, I know it has been a long time since I have posted a review. In fact, I finished reading Bel Canto sometime at the end of November, but have got caught up in working full time in a government job that sucks my will to look at a computer more than necessary, and the holidays really destroyed my free-time and my ability to nurture my hobbies. So, I am now again at a point where I have a couple books I have read which can be reviewed, so I am hoping to return to a more regular pace. However, since I am reading a bit more slowly, what with less free time than in the Fall, I am hoping to be able to publish reviews on a biweekly schedule, as opposed to a weekly one. Thank you readers for your patience.
- Why did I pick this book up?
I originally bought this book at a yard sale many years ago, and got around to reading it a few weeks ago because it is one of the only books on my shelf that I haven’t read, other than some Dickens. I also ask my Instagram followers to pick between 2 books I suggest, and this is what was picked. So that’s what I chose to read. Also, I thought it would be interesting to read a book that tackles the subject of terrorism, but in a pre-9/11 time (this book came out mere months before 9/11).
- Would I recommend why/why not?
I personally found this book to be not good. I am trying to be polite, as it is an award-winning book, and I felt that this book was trying to accomplish a lot, but failed. So, I personally would not recommend this book as I found the ending to be so dumb and trite (in fact, I found the ending so bad that it ruined any positive feelings I had had for the book up until that point).
I also would not recommend this book as there was a lot of sort of weird quasi-racist statements peppered throughout the book. It was hard to tell if these statements were merely meant to reflect the imperfect characters, or if these statements reflected the pervasive racism the author feels, (I know, I know, we are supposed to separate the author from the book/protagonist) but there was simply so many weird statements about the ‘savagery’ of Latin Americans and their nations that I couldn’t simply swallow them without questioning what their inclusion meant and reflected.
I suppose I would recommend this book if you really, really like opera, and if you like reading interesting descriptions of music and its effect on people and their mood/memories. That’s about the only positive thing I have to say about the book.
- Quick Synopsis **SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON, DO I EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT?!**:
The book opens at a fancy opera show in the Vice President of some unnamed Latin American country’s home. The main characters we are introduced to are: a lady opera singer, a middle-aged Japanese man who is her biggest fan, and his translator, who is a younger Japanese man. Terrorists (who we learn are really just trying to fight political and economic injustice in their country) break into the home, intending to hold the President hostage. The president is not there, so they decide to take the whole house and its dozens of guests hostage. Ok. Sounds like a genius plan.
They release all the women except for the opera singer because they decide she must increase their bargaining power (am I a jackass for thinking being an opera singer doesn’t make you a valuable hostage?) so the rest of the text is basically this woman and a bunch of men (and the 2 terrorists who happen to be young girls) living in this fancy house and waiting for negotiations to go through. Apparently this country really doesn’t have its shit together, because hostages and captors live together in relative peace for MONTHS.
Lalala time passes, pretty much every man is in love with the opera singer because of her voice/the fact that she is basically the only woman in sight. The translator falls in love with one of the terrorist women. His employer is super in love with the annoying opera singer (again, her only perceivable quality is her voice) and they all conspire to get them to bone in secret. The translator and the terrorist also bone in secret. It seems like things will continue like this forever.
But no! Right at the end the government busts in, killing literally all the terrorists (including the young sexy lady the translator loves), and they manage to kill the old Japanese guy (who was shielding the sexy terrorist) as well.
If this had been the end I would’ve been somewhat satisfied.
However, the horrifying epilogue shows us that the opera singer has married the younger Japanese guy (what?! why?! creepy!!!) in some weird attempt to bond and preserve their memory of being held hostage and having both their loved ones murdered in front of them? Again, WHAT?!
Anyways, made the book feel like a waste of time imo, and also just talk about a weird and stupid ending that is supposed to wrap things up neatly, but honestly at no point did the book establish that these characters were compatible, so I would’ve been way happier if they had remained sad forever. Ugh. Also, a lot of weird racist and kinda weirdly sexist shit appears in this novel.
[A book sits on a planner. The book has a blueish photo of fancy people at a fancy party. There is a gold music note on the cover as well.]
- Overall brain gushings :
Ugh. This book. Patchett seems to have really weird preconceptions about men and women based on their gender: the men seem to be really sexist, and the women seem to be very frivolous and superficial. Also, there are only heterosexual people (or so it would seem) and any passages that deal with Carla (a young girl who gets mistaken for a boy) are incredibly creepy/sexist and highlight the weird biases that Patchett and her characters seem to share.
Seriously, the characters are INSANE.
Also, music is amazing, but I felt like Patchett was being snobby about opera throughout the novel, placing it above all art forms.
Again, the ending is actually terrible: I was ready to give the novel a pass, was even thinking the ending was sort of poignant, and then she had to ruin it with a super bizarre epilogue that undercut all the emotion and work the novel had put into making me care about or even slightly like the characters.
- What does it mean?
I think that there are a few things the novel is trying to say: that music connects people in ways nothing else can, that it crosses all boundaries of culture, gender, and language. That’s pretty nice. However, I think it also means that in the end, while music can connect people on a personal level (and change them in a similar manner) it cannot affect geopolitical and large-scale change. It cannot end a revolution; it cannot address the root causes of unhappiness and marginalization, and this is the failure of art.
I do tend to disagree with this, as I can think of a lot of examples of really influential art that affected large scale change (though I suppose nothing in the vein of stopping a revolution/freeing hostages) and moved beyond the realm of the personal, and into the public. Books like The Well of Loneliness or Lady Chatterley’s Lover are a few examples of books that helped spur on sexual revolutions and change mainstream attitudes about sexuality and LGBT awareness. Other books like Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (confession: I have only ever read this book’s Wikipedia page, so take my analysis with a large grain of salt) have managed to influence a bunch of douchey dude-bro libertarians so that’s another example.
Also, it weirded me out that she chose to constantly emphasize the non-specificity of which country this was. Like it could be any Latin American country, because Patchett views them as all the same. Ugh. To pile on my “alsos”, this book is loosely based on something that happened in Peru in 1996 and to quote a Goodreads review “It upset me to realize that Patchett was using a piece of Peruvian history with no intention of telling a story of Peru or its political unrest or even including a proper description of the country”. She could have had a lot to say about the shady way in which the militants were killed, or what caused this situation in the first place, but instead Patchett seems more concerned with what opera can do, and telling a romantic story full of purple prose.
Patchett seems to view opera as a panacea for all the worlds tension and fear, and yet her ending (again, something that is based in history and could therefore be rendered extremely poignant) shows that this is deluded, and the chance to make a commentary on real-world situations and contexts is lost.
- Favourite passages :
Honestly, I didn’t really have that many favourite passages… There were a few sentences here and there that were poignant (usually about music and memory) but nothing too notable/quotable. I am going to cite some of the batshit things too because that amused me to no end.
A French ambassador muses on how he has fallen in love with his wife anew upon his arrival to “this godforsaken country” (that is also a direct quote!) :
In this country with its dirt roads and yellow rice he discovered he loved her, he was her. Perhaps this would not have been true if he had been the ambassador to Spain. Without these particular circumstances, this specific and horrible place, he might never have realized that the only true love of his life was his wife.
Ann Patchett, pg 36
Again, WHAT IS THIS PASSAGE? Prejudice on prejudice! And to those who think that maybe it is just the ambassador’s point of view, and not Patchett’s, literally every character is super prejudiced, so if the point that she is making is that everyone is prejudice, then it makes perfect that sense that she is prejudiced AF.
There are a few moments where Patchett actually has some semi-insightful things to say about the “terrorists” but these moments are not mined to their full potential:
‘We all should have gone home a week ago,’ General Benjamin sighed. ‘But we have to see our brothers released.’ For General Benjamin, of course, this meant both his philosophical comrades and his literal brother, Luis. Luis, who had committed the crime of distributing flyers for a political protest and was now buried alive in a high-altitude prison. Before his brother’s arrest, Benjamin had not been a general at all. He had taught grade school. He had lived in the south of the country near the ocean.
pg 136
- If you liked this (or my review), consider reading :
Although I did not like this book, it made me think about interesting texts that discuss the importance of art and creativity in the face of crisis. The texts I would recommend that deal with this theme would be Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (pretty sure I have recommended that book before, but since it is my favourite, can’t hurt to recommend it often).
I’ve also realized that writing reviews on books I didn’t enjoy is more fun than writing about books I liked. Clearly, I like to bitch about books I didn’t have the talent or dedication to write. Ha!
Stay tuned for my next review of the oh-so-fun read that is Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Seriously, this book was such a silly and enjoyable romp through the Apocalypse.
It's Lit Fam! 