Bel Canto

By: Ann Patchett

Narrated by: Anna Fields

Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

“Blissfully Romantic.... A strange, terrific, spellcasting story.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

“Bel Canto...should be on the list of every literate music lover. The story is riveting, the participants breathe and feel and are alive, and throughout this elegantly-told novel, music pours forth so splendidly that the reader hears it and is overwhelmed by its beauty.” (Lloyd Moss, WXQR)

“Glorious.” (The New Yorker)

Ann Patchett’s award winning, New York Times best-selling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Pratchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.

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©2001 Ann Patchett (P)2001 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic reviews

• 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction
• Book Sense Book of the Year Award Winner, Paperback, 2003
• PEN/Faulkner Award Winner, 2002

"Patchett can be counted on to deliver novels rich in imaginative bravado and psychological nuance. This fluid and assured narrative...demonstrates her growing maturity and mastery of form." (Publishers Weekly)
"Mixing art and politics can have unexpected results, but rarely are they so poignant....[Anna Fields'] performance is the essence of Bel Canto, easy, pure of tone, with an agile, precise vocal technique." (AudioFile)

Great listen

I was enthralled by this book. I stayed up late and got up early to listen and felt like crying for all the characters when I was finished. The reader was excellent.

Good Read, Poor Epilogue

It was a good story with inevitable ending but the epilogue followed only one situation and 3 characters. It would have been better to hear about post adjustments of some of the other characters.

The Narration is So Good

I think it is a five star novel overall and a five star story but maybe it is not and it is the narration that has clouded my critical faculties. The narrator, Anna Fields, is just the right combination of matter of fact delivery, excellent and not over-the-top accents (Spanish, French and Russian) and excellent portrayal of the characters without acting up a storm. This is how I like to hear a book.

My heart!

I loved this book and the telling couldn’t have been more poignant. I’m grieving it’s ending.

Slow burn

I was bored for much of the first half of this book, maybe I was distracted or stressed. But it snuck up on me. I truly could not predict the ending, and that is rare for me. Lovely writing.

Beautiful

A gorgeous book, with rich characters. Excellent narration of a difficult cast. I highly recommend it!

fantastic find

I bought this book on a whim but really did not think I would like it much. for me it took a little bit to get started but then the book was very engaging. I love all the intricate details of the characters.

Unsure at the start, then didn't want it to end

Well narrated, intriguing background story and character development. You can't help but love the people and the connections they forge.

Wonderfully read

Bel Canto has been a favorite novel of mine since our chance meeting in a bookstore in 2008. I'm a classical singer and music teacher by trade, and being engulfed by this novel was like being engulfed by a stunning piece of music. I wasn't sure how I was going to like this narration of it, but I decided I wanted to revisit this story in a bit of a different way.

It was everything I wanted to be -- almost. With opera so central to the plot, I wish they'd hired a consultant to help the narrator pronounce some of the words. Most of them were ok, but very early in the book, Rigoletto is discussed repeatedly and the star soprano of this opera is Gilda. The first sound of this name is like jam, not like goose. It was mispronounced each time and really grated on my nerves. Though I didn't notice any other egregious errors like this one, I did feel that the Italian texts were usually anglicanized in a way that opera singers and true enthusiasts would never do. This is probably a non-issue or small issue for most people, but I found it a little awkward.

Otherwise, I thought it a beautiful performance of a wonderful story. Highly recommended.

How can being a hostage be humorous?

What made the experience of listening to Bel Canto the most enjoyable?

I was afraid it would be grim, but Ann Patchett manages to lace the story with gentle humour. And of course, there are romances.

Have you listened to any of Anna Fields’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I have never heard Anna Fields before, but she was amazing with Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, French, Swiss, English and probably other accents.