Bel Canto – Ann Patchett
After my mother recommended it particularly highly, I read Run by Ann Patchett earlier this year and loved it. I adore Ian McEwan’s writing, and after Run I became sure I had found a female counterpart for McEwan to add to my list of favourite writers.
Then I was given Bel Canto, and my suspicions were confirmed.
It is a book like no other. I was asked to describe it while reading in bed the other night.
‘Well… it’s about a famous opera singer who comes to sing at the vice-president’s house in a poor third-world country on an occasion which marks the birthday of a prominent Japanese businessman… but during the concert the house is stormed by a terrorist group - revolutionaries, really - who capture everyone present in an attempt to overthrow the government.’
‘Wow!’ My partner said, immediately intrigued. ‘I should read it! It sounds so exciting!’
The thing is… the description I gave is a little misleading. It is exciting – certainly at the beginning. But anyone who picks it up in the belief that they will be getting a thrilling adventure story, all colourful revolution and political drama, will be disappointed.
This is so much more than a thriller.
Ann Patchett, like Ian McEwan, is a master at dreaming up situations in which the ordinary and the extraordinary collide. Like the legendary Christmas Eve during World War One in which German and British soldiers momentarily put down arms, crawled out of the trenches and played a game of soccer with one another, the occupied vice-president’s house in Bel Canto becomes a space where human relationships, through the intensity of circumstances, develop faster and stronger than they do in the real world.
The vice-president of a Latin American country learns humility, and to love an impoverished young boy who once held a gun to his head. A famous American opera singer falls in love with a man whose language she cannot speak. A French diplomat, through separation from his wife and anxiety over the potential imminent death of one or both of them, remembers how much he truly loves her, even after so many years. A voice more beautiful than any of us will ever hear is born, grows and disappears before its time, like a firefly in darkness.
The love, the fear, the joy that is felt during the occupation – each of these emotions is heightened by the strangeness of the situation. Imagine life stopped – for once the treadmill ceases turning. You are still. There is a foreign beauty to be had in such stillness. After many days inside, when the hostages are allowed into the garden of the vice-president’s mansion, the feel of the grass beneath their feet, the sight and smell of the flowers, the warmth of the sun on their hair – these things are glorious beyond their wildest dreams. Yet we pass them by each day without noticing.
Ann Patchett creates a mythical world where we least expect it – in an ordinary house, in an ordinary garden. The magic emerges through the interactions between people who would never otherwise meet – revolutionary and politician, poverty-struck adolescents and highly educated translators and businessmen, Swiss aid workers and opera singers. Patchett weaves the tales of these people together with intricate blossoms of simple words.
The result is literary beauty that you will never forget. Read it.
Tags: Ann Patchett, Ian McEwan