Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I have a weakness for novels about musicians. I am not interested in biographies of real musicians, just fiction featuring imaginary ones. I find myself drawn to these novels about musicians with the expectation of finding larger insights about life, spirituality, and truth. Even the flattest characters in the dullest plots are trying to touch the untouchable, dabbling in the black art that is music. However, when the characters are perfectly rendered, their voices clear and their actions guided by music itself, halleluja!. There is nothing grander or more majestic than that devotion to something bigger than we humans could ever be.

Bel Canto is a beautifully written book by Ann Patchett about an opera singer who is taken hostage along with other members of a dinner party in an unnamed South American country. While opinions of the book run the usual gamut, I believe that my love for this book is off the charts. If I were an Amazon reviewer, I would give it six out of five stars. I loved every second of the Bel Canto because the main character was music.

Through the opera singer, Patchett lets music do what music does best: it transcends all the details of our backgrounds and beliefs and shines a mirror on our shared humanity. It makes a multinational group of terrified hostages remember that there is something more than just the here and now. Patchett is able to harness this power and unleash it in a most profound way.

For some people this force is God, for some it is art or literature, and maybe for some it is a force that I cannot even begin to imagine. But for me, for as long as I can remember, that transforming power has been music.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

tags: books book reviews opera singers hostages musicians Ann Patchett