Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

It takes a really good writer to set an entire 300-page novel in one house occupied by 58 hostages and a handful of terrorists for a five-month period of time and still make it interesting. And, while at times I as the reader felt like one of those in custody reading it, I made it through to the end, somehow even glad I had done so. Ann Patchett's Bel Canto is a character-driven story of displaced persons and their battle not with out-of-control circumstances, but instead with familiar tedium.

The story opens with a special international birthday party in South America for one Mr. Hokosawa, a Japanese businessman whom his South American acquaintances have invited for a party to try to woo him and his company into investing in their struggling economy. The entertainment for the evening is an American named Roxanne Coss, a world-reknowned soprano, of whom Mr. Hokosawa is an enormous fan. The party begins, Miss Coss sings, and Mr. Hokosawa is quite enthralled. All seems to be going well enough.

But then the unexpected happens: terrorists crash the party, ransom demands are made, and the angst of an all-too-routine existence begins to transpire in the passing days and nights, spent at first as terrorist and hostage, later as overseer and occupant, and finally as friend and even lover. It's an interesting progression of relationships, made all the more so by a variety of characters of different nationalities, backgrounds, and experiences and their interactions with each other.

Tying all the drama together is Patchett's writing - truthful, detailed, and observant. If the mark of a good story is one that seems told as truth rather than written as fiction, Patchett earns her stripes with her narrative description of all going on within the house:

"The crowd on the floor pulsed with needs. Some had to go to the bathroom again. There were murmurings about medications. People wanted to stand up, to be fed, to have a drink of water to wash the taste from their mouths. Their restlessness emboldended them, but there was this as well: nearly eighteen hours had passed and still no one was dead. The hostages had begun to believe that they might not be killed. If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to seem secure, one feels the freedom to complain."

Matching her elegant style and earthy sense of observation to the qualities and quirks created in each of her characters, one gets a sense of the tension created in such small surroundings with such big implications of those characters clashing. Her writing is uncomfortable and yet irrestible as she unfolds the realities of her fiction. Not a fast read by any means, Bel Canto is a rich one to be savored.