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)

only all right

I might have expected too much from this book. I had heard many great things, but I thought it was only okay. I kept waiting and waiting for that moment that just grips you and you never want to stop listening, but it never came. Anna Fields does a great job, though!

Beautiful Singing

The story's characters are as real as the people i see everyday. It is a wonderful, painful,dreamlike love story. It feels like the ending is abrupt. Only later did i realize it made me just like the people in the story would have felt. There was no other ending possible.

Unusual, engaging story

Every time I found myself thinking this story sounded impossible, it would surprise me and draw me in further. It doesn't really matter if it is realistic or not. The characters are wonderful and the relationships, while unconventional, are interesting. This is a book in which you are drawn to almost all the characters, however flawed. Loved it!

A book to savor

Ann Patchett develops her characters oh so slowly, in the same way we learn about people in real life. This allowed me to get to know them and savor them. Listening added to this dimension for me especially with such an expressive narrator.

what a beautiful story

love, excitement, tears, understanding, breathless.

I am holding back my tears as this ending was so beautiful and sad. such a great read. honestly, slow start...but well worth every single word!!! the Writer did an excellent job with every detail!!

Beautifully Written: Disappointing Morality

This was a magical story about how music can transform a situation. However, the infidelity towards the end was very disappointing. It diminished the beauty.

I didn't think I was going to be so interested

I'm not giving away the story but she systematically brings you thru the story getting to know and like people and cheering for them to feel what it must have felt like in the end.
I have trouble sitting and listening to a story thru. I lose interest here and there usually but not in this book.
she keeps you waiting and interested without too much time passing before you can think I no longer care about this character.
she gives you just enough clearly and then allows you to feel as if you were them.
what it must have been like.
she allows you to know what will happen in the end. at first, you think when will it happen with an eager sensation but as you near the end you think when's it going to happen with dread.

Amazing!

One of the best books I have read in the past 10 years! The performance was astounding!

Engaging

This is an extremely engaging and well written novel. The characters are each completely realized and I felt more and more connected to the individuals as they intertwined.
Patchett went to Sarah Lawrence College, of which I am alum. She's remarkable and easy to recommend.

A lyrical read, beautifully narrated

4.5 stars. This book caught me in the right mood at the right time to be swept away with the story. The ruminations about the unique positions of translators, the hidden potential, abilities and understanding that emerge when class distinctions are erased, the enjoyment that is internalized by performing tasks one loves--I loved it all.

It was eye-opening to read reviews after having finished the book. I didn't know, going in, that it was based on (or just inspired by?) a real life event. This seems to have polarized some readers, but it just piqued my interest regarding an area of the world I'm not familiar with, which I appreciated. Even though I kept wondering about the captor's end plan (and the fact they didn't seem to have one), I wasn't holding their lack of planning against the author, but more as a flaw in autonomous characters. Now, knowing the actual ending of the Peruvian crisis, I see that the author stayed more or less true to the bones of that event.

I'm not an opera enthusiast (and kind of wonder that absolutely everyone in the house was eager to listen to it for hours at a time, every day), but the reverence it stirred in the listeners reminded me of that wonderful scene in The Shawshank Redemption when Andy DuFresnes broadcasts that compelling, soaring opera piece over the loudspeakers to the entire prison.

I completely enjoyed this book until the epilogue, which I found dissonant and unnecessary.

The narrator enhanced the experience through a truly dexterous use of accents and tone--VERY well done.