What readers think of Bel Canto, plus links to write your own review.

This was a great book. There is tremendous character development and interaction. It really makes you feel like you're in the mansion with the rest of the characters.

This book was a delight to read. The author, concentrating on the beauty of the singer/singer and the skill of the interpreter, managed to bring to light how human nature needs to love someone, that our attraction to someone is as much based on emotional response as it is on verbal communication. She also illuminates the need for humans to have meaning in their lives, no matter how narrow that life might be. The acts of kindness and affection that spring up between captor and captive seem fantasy, but really happen in real life: consider for instance the jailor and the prisoner in the penitentary setting. A surprise ending for sure, but plausible if you consider why Mr. Hosakawa came to hire Gen to begin with.

As I read this novel, I kept searching for the larger meaning. The style seemed to hearken to "magical realism", yet I continued to long for more ties to reality, however magical. The hostages were too broadly drawn, too nice, way too "reasonable". Cultural and individual differences, punctuated at the beginning, disintegrated at the end(I had a hard time paying attention after everyone fell in love). I also felt that the European was valued over the indigenous, i.e., Cesar and Ishmael more valued as they became proficient at chess and opera singing(another difficult-to-believe plot development:nobody in this novel is ever merely "reasonably talented"-they are all superlatives!). The stereotypes too broad despite elaborate efforts at character development. At the end of the novel, we don't even find out what happened in the imaginary South American country, whose political situation I wanted elucidated more clearly. I liked the prose style, but I never did succeed in understanding the author's intentions. There was a parrallel between Roxanne and Gen, suspending chaos through interpreting and music respectively, reconciling differences, positing meaning. The interpreting, and especially the music, unify the multilingual and multicultural assemblage. We all long for such an outcome in this world. Yet I kept remembering a true Holocaust narrative in which a brilliant violinist is killed, despite his genius. Unfortunately reality is more grim than this novel, and people who live by terror are not transported by music, and do not suspend their irrationality. This novel was just too fantastical for me.

I am surprised the previous 2 raters rated this book low. This is one of the very best books I have had the distinct pleasure of reading. I especially like the character of the owner of the home, the vice president. THere are too many beautiful and insightful and brilliant moments to recapture here, suffice to say I was sad the book ended, wished it could have gone on forever.

This book was absolutely amazing. As a character-driven novel, Bel Canto reveals humanity in its purest form, providing for an emotionally affective story. I consider this book to be a five because as I read it seemed as though I was uable to turn the pages quickly enough; ironically as I absorbed the story, I realized the inevitable ending of the novel, yet suppressed my knowledge for my hope of a happy ending. Such an ability to deeply affect a reader reveals the brilliance of an author.

This book, my book group's September selection, was a great disappointment. Our group leader led us to believe this was one of the best books she'd ever read, and I was eager to get started. Get started I did, but the author didn't. This book has absolutely no plot, and is boring to the point of laborious. I forced myself, in two sessions, to get to page 88. I put the book down, read two others, and felt it was again time to approach it. I read five more pages, then skimmed/flipped to the end. This beast never got any better.

As a college Literature major and an avid (5-6 books a month) reader, I found this book to be totally without merit. It says nothing and goes nowhere.

Don't attempt to read this beast. Oral surgery is less painful.

Hello-
I heard a lot of good reviews about this book and - how disappointing ! I now think that there was an opportunity for a great book but it was missed. I found the reading pleasant and the story somewhat interesting but very flat when it comes to describing the characters. I personally love stories with good strong developped characters. In this book, I didn't find one single character that I was sad to leave behind when I turned the last page. When the author started developing a character and I started entering his/her world, Ann Patchett suddenly dropped him/her and moved to another one. It became very frustrating at one point and prevented me to really enter the story. Finally, I didn't really see what the end was adding to the story. <<edited for possible plot spoiler content>> I gave it a '2' because it is not the worst book I ever read (it was still a nice pleasant book to read) but because I felt like I didn't meet any interesting characters.

The narrative is filled with comic irony, although Patchett's style is so subtle that at times I did not realize I was smiling. On one level, it is a romantic fantasy, a vision of so much that is good about humanity and then a sad reminder of what is bad. We are asked, for a time, to suspend our belief in the obvious, the inevitable. And so gently and gracefully does Patchett weave a web of a budding paradise that she has readers believing in the impossible. The transition to reality takes no one by surprise. We know, in the back of our minds, what will happen. Patchett manipulates our emotional responses so skillfully that we do not even notice it. In the end, she delivers a perfectly right, charming little surprise that allows us to exit on a high note. Finally, the great simplicity of language should make it relatively easy to translate this book into other languages while losing very little of its beauty and meaning.