Tag: romance

Bel Canto Review

This book gets 1.5 grand pianos out of 5. I cannot cut the piano in half, so you just get one photo (this novel does not deserve to have its score rounded up for the sake of a pretty diptych).
[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.

It took me so long to get this blog post together that I couldn’t be bothered to take a fancy picture.
[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.

Decorum Review

This book gets three gorgeous gowns out of 5. I couldn’t find anything that fit the 1890s style, but these dresses are all so pretty I don’t even care.
[There is a triptych of gowns: a purple ruffly dress, a pale orange gown, and a white long-sleeved wedding dress with buttons all up the back. I would wear all these dresses if I had the money/reason to.]

Apologies for running a little late with this weekend’s review… my work schedule has been insane and all over the place which has delayed me. I have also fallen behind on my reading and am finally at the point where my blogging has caught up to my reading so I need to set aside some real reading time this week to get back on track. For you readers, I’ll do it!

  • Why did I pick this book up?

I started reading Kaaren Christopherson’s Decorum because it was another one of the 3/$10 books I bought recently. Also, I was in the mood for some historical fiction, and seeing how I’ve blown through Sarah Waters’ catalogue this spring, this was my most handy option. The protagonist is also a woman named Francesca Lund, and I grew up in a village called Lund, so this happy coincidence didn’t hurt.

I have a lot of love for novels set in the Victorian era, because I am one of those rare English scholars that HATES Victorian lit, but loves historical fiction set in that time. I hate Jane Austen, and I think part of it is because I am too dense to pick up on all the subtleties that happen in high society, so I’d rather read a contemporary take on the era and its behaviours. I need that shit spelled out to me, and also want to read a ton of descriptions of masked balls and corsets. This book does a decent delivery of those things.

  • Would I recommend why/why not?

I would recommend this book if you are into romantic intrigue and mysterious marriage schemes, but also like reading about fancy parties and 1890s America. That is very specific, I know. I would not recommend this book if you have no interest in love or romance, or marriage or whatever, because this book is pretty full of all that. I myself found myself getting bored for the last hundred pages of the book: the big scheming and intrigue had reached its climax, and I found the romantic subplot that took over to be a bit tedious. The book could’ve ended with the big reveal, and left the reader (that is me) to imagine that the romantic subplot would resolve itself in some fashion that would push the two characters who are ‘obviously’ supposed to wind up together into their proper places. Instead, I had to read another hundred pages of feelings and to me the only redeeming factor was that this was occurring in Banff, Canada, so that was neat.

  • Quick Synopsis  **SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON, DO I EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT?!**:

Broadstrokes here. Francesca Lund’s parents die in a tragic accident. We really start the novel five years later, when Francesca is finally back to living in her family home after being taken in by family friends. She is set to be engaged to a man named Edmund Tracey who has been pursuing her for years. It is quickly implied that Tracey is a cad who is maybe just after Francesca because she is loaded. I ain’t saying he a gold-digger… except that he totally is. So there is a ton of investigating into his past that goes on, and it’s pretty fun and enticing.

At the same time, the novel follows a man named Connor O’Casey, who I don’t think I really like, even by the end of the novel. Anyways, he is trying to be a self-made man, nouveau-riche in a world of old money. His ‘companion’ is a widow named Blanche, and she has a pretty cool backstory. I think she is my favourite character in the novel. Anyways, he is trying to build a fancy hotel in New York with some rich men, and he comes into Francesca’s orbit. He totally has the hots for her, and drama ensues in a crazy love… pentagon? It’s definitely more complicated than a love triangle.

Anyways, as mentioned, drama, big reveals, and even crime ensue. Eventually, the drama is resolved, a bunch of the characters go vacation in Banff, Canada (which is pretty neat and all about how fucking cold it is there, ha) and resolve their differences so they all end up happy and/or in love in some shape or form.

I apologize for the subpar photo… I snapped this in the early morning before running to work. A bad photo is better than no photo? Also I chose to feature our cute flower pot by Wildtreeceramics who is a local Ottawa artist.
[A hand holds a book that has a drawing of a woman in a pink dress. Behind the book is a succulent in a ceramic pot that says “zen as fuck” on it.]
  • Overall brain gushings :

My favourite aspects were the descriptions of clothes and society rules: the book’s chapters actually all begin with excerpts from an etiquette book and I found this framing device to be interesting and enlightening to the manners of the time. I definitely never would have made in far in that society; would have been so easy for me to put my foot in my mouth.

There were also some pretty funny tongue-in-cheek moments that pointed fun at gendered double standards, but also at times the book fell into its own traps. Just felt a tad sappy at times, and no character (except my main chick Blanche) seemed particularly exciting or progressive.

  • What does it mean?

The book is concerned with double standards and their affect on men and women’s abilities to pursue their desires, both in the Victorian era and the 21st century. It assesses how wealth and its pursuit transform people, but does not judge them, instead critiquing the fabric of society that has a tendency to make people miserable and insecure more than happy.

Buried in the novel are some interesting comments on “propriety”, and Decorum shows that manners do not make the man, or woman.

Here are some things I think the novel said to me, even if that wasnt Christopherson’s intent:

– You never really know someone! People change and are insanely good at hiding their true selves!

– Prenups are a good thing!

– And never trust a man who has a bunch of mysterious “friends” that he spends all his free time with, but that you never get to meet.

  • Favourite passages :

A lot of my favourite passages wound up being the excerpts from the etiquette book, because they were interesting commentaries on the novel and its plot, and also very enlightening for a ‘modern’ reader such as myself.

A man does himself no service with another when he obliges him to know people whom he would rather avoid.

Kaaren Christopherson, pg 65

This quote really spoke to the grouchy person that lives inside me, and my attempt to refuse fake and superficial interactions. It may make me seem like a jerk, but I’d rather seem like an honest bitch than a fake one.

There are two things that make people crazy — having money and not having money. If they haven’t any money of their own to control, they want to control somebody else’s.

Christopherson, pg 76

I feel like the following passage is something a lot of men could stand to learn properly.

If you are a gentleman, never lower the intellectual standard of your conversation in addressing ladies… When you ‘come down’ to commonplace or small-talk with an intelligent lady, one of the two things is the consequence, she either recognizes the condescension and despises you, or else she accepts it as the highest intellectual effort of which you are capable, and rates you accordingly.

Christopherson, pg 345
  • If you liked this (or my review), consider reading :

If you want to read some more historical fiction, I recommend anything by Sarah Waters! She is easily one of my top ten writers, and probably my favourite writer of historical fiction. If you want to stay in a similar time period as Decorum, read Waters’ Affinity.

Otherwise, The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (author of Room) is an interesting tale about 1860s Ireland and the tensions between science and faith. Stephen King reviewed it and liked it so there’s another reason to read The Wonder!

You could also read Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty and its sequels; these were my favourite books as a young teenager, and I remember it being my first great introduction to historical fiction.

Stay tuned for my next review, Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot. Mailhot is a woman who grew up on a reservation in British Columbia and her memoir has received a ton of accolades in Canada; it was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and is easily the book I’ve been the most excited to read all year.