Friday Forays in Fiction: Bel Canto--Review & Read-a-Long

Bel Canto
by Ann Patchett

This is in conjunction with the read-a-long at Bookjourney

Although I am making this my Friday post I am beginning work on it very close to midnight and will be surprised if I post before dawn as I'm still reading--just passed halfway point.

I decided that it would be a good idea to start the post now anyway for several reasons--it will give me some place to drop quotes and thots as I read; gathering the jigsaw pieces of the post will give me some something to do that both keeps my mind in the story and allows me to take occasional breaks relaxing the focus of my mind from the intensity of the narrative and of my eyes from the tarantella of the fonts.

Besides I've already got plenty to say about this story even if I were to post this before reading another word.

Let's begin with what the novel itself began with:


I don't know if this was the particular song the character of Roxane Coss was singing but it is from the same Opera--Rusalka.  I'll be listening as I read.

That music puts shivers in my soul in the same manner as does Patchett's prose when she hits notes like this one:

She was as silent as light on the leaves of trees.

or this one:

Gen exchanged their sentences like a bank teller pushing stacks of currency back and forth over a smooth marble countertop.

I've collected over a dozen of those to return to and savor like exquisite chocolate truffles.

In the presence of prose like that I am much like the characters of Carmen, Father Arguedas, and Mr. Hosokawa in the presence of Roxane--full of awe and gratitude.

So then, a bit about the story itself.  It's set in an unnamed South American country where a birthday party is being held for a Japanese mogul they are hoping will open a branch of his company there.  Mr. Hosokawa has no intention of operating his business in their unstable nation so has turned down many such invitations before but this time they lure him with the one thing he can't resist--a recital of opera songs sung by his favorite soprano, Roxane Coss.

The party is held at the Vice President's mansion and though the President himself had promised to attend he pleaded national security business at the last minute in order to stay home and watch his favorite soap opera. Which is how he avoided being kidnapped by the terrorists who infiltrated the mansion through the air-conditioning ducts as the last notes of the last song linger in the air.

Deprived of their target they instead hold the entire household hostage amounting to some two hundred including businessmen, diplomats, politicians, their spouses, the Vice President's family, two priests and the staff.  The following day with the help of a Red Cross negotiator they let all but a few dozen highest value individuals leave including the staff and all women but one--the soprano herself.  And then the 58 souls remaining--including the three 'Generals' and their dozen or so rag-tag teen 'soldiers' settle in for what is to become a several months standoff with the authorities and their own spit-polished young soldiers surrounding the walled estate.

Gen, Mr. Hosakawa's personal translator is soon depended upon by all for the communication of everything from mundane minutia to profound declarations, to nerve wracking negotiations between the English speaking Roxane, the French Diplomat, the Japanese and Russian businessmen, the Spanish speaking VP and terrorists, and the Swedish speaking Red Cross negotiator.  Besides which he is tutoring his boss in Spanish and Carmen, one of the teenaged terrorists, in reading and writing the Spanish she already speaks as the two of them fall in love.

When, a couple of weeks into the captivity, Roxane begins practicing her singing daily, music becomes yet another language but one for which Gen's services are not needed for it is understood by all.

The household, enveloped in a heavy mist for weeks, seems like a microcosm of the world itself held in a limbo outside of time.


[OK it is now after 9am my time and I'm still several dozens of pages out but Shelia's post has just gone up which I'm going to take as my excuse to go ahead and post what I have here so I can add my link.  I've still got so much to say so I'm going to reserve the right to update this post later.]

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Bell Canto--A Read-a-Long

Like Sheila at Bookjourney, I too have had Ann Patchett's Bell Canto on my TBR for years.  Unlike the recent read-a-longs at Bookjourney this will not be a re-read for me.  I expect to love this story as I loved The Patron Saint of Liars but even if I'd never read another of Patchett the report that she uses magic realism would draw me in as that is one of my favorite styles of writing.  So I am jazzed about this one.

The date for sharing our reviews and reactions at Bookjourney is set for September 13. Magical reading folks.

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It's Monday! What are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Share what you (are, have been, are about to, hope to be) reading or reviewing this week. Sign Mr Linky at Book Journey and visit other Monday reading roundups.



This past week we had the discussion at Sheila's for Bookjourney's Read-a-Long for Daphne du Mauier's Rebecca.  My post musing on my second reading of Rebecca after over three decades is here.  


I recently finished the PDF ARC for The Reluctant Matchmaker by Shobhan Bantwal.  The blog tour for Bantwal's book is in August.  For this tour I'm to post twice: a review on August 7th and an author interview with giveaway on August 8th.  I'm excited as this is my first author interview.  I've already got the answers to my interview questions back from Ms Bantwal and can't wait to share them.


I have continued reading the ebook I was reading aloud to my Mom while staying there in March and April: At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon.  The short little chapters are almost like stand-alone short stories with beloved characters.

Besides the Karon novel which I will continue to read over the next week or three and then probably move on to the next novel in the series, I also continued with the several non-fiction books I've had going for some time: 


The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Go by Les Edgerton
Get Your Loved One Sober by Robert Meyers
Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Leher

All four of those are research for the writing side of my life.  The third one for a character tho I won't deny I there are potential real life application for the info.

Then this past week I added Laura Stack's What to Do When There's Too Much to Do

I am taking all five slow as that is my preferred way to read non-fic.  It sticks with me longer.

I am still targeting for review Grace McCleen's The Land of Decoration which I read the week I was preparing for the trip back to Mom's near the end of March and loved but I have had to start rereading it what with the first time being in the midst of upheaval and the emotional impact of it carrying its own upheaval due to the emotional triggers rooted in my personal history which I am having difficulty separating out from the 'legitimate' author-intended emotional impact.  Tho maybe I'm mistaken in thinking that is necessary.  If even possible.

The narrator protagonist is a pre-teen being raised in a fundamentalist Christian sect that is so similar to the one I was raised in, it might even be the same one or the parent sect to the parent sect of ours.  The author doesn't name the sect though.  She is being bullied at school because of the strangeness her faith imparts on her in the eyes of the other kids--just as I was.  And she escapes the pain of this isolation through elaborate daydreams and building of a model of the Promised Land aka Land of Decoration out of scraps, trash, weeds and clay.  Just as I did if you substitute story dreaming, reading and writing and the world building of those stories in my daydreams.

I have also returned after a long hiatus to Say You're One of Them by Uwen Akpan.  It is actually multiple stories of various lengths and I set it aside after reading a nearly novella length one several months ago.  I started the next story after finishing the Bantwal book.  This was an Oprah Book Club selection several years ago and at the time I could not get my turn with the library book before the O Book Club met to discuss.  I had been able to read the first story tho as Oprah.com gave away a pdf of it.  The first two stories are quite disturbing as is this one shaping up to be.  The theme of them all seems to be the terrible situations life deals to children in Africa.

Yesterday a future blog tour feature ebook arrived in my inbox and I spent hours trying to get it open in my Kindle for PC.  After several restarts, and a re-install of the application I finally got it open and then started to read it just to see what I was getting my into.  It is Sulan by Camille Picott. I was over 30% into it before I noticed.  It is a Dystopia Cyberpunk with a strong female teen protag and though I'm still only about 60 odd percent done it is stacking up well in comparison to Hunger Games.

I've always read multiple non-fic concurrently but I nearly never used to read two novels at once let alone...how many now?  They are not all listed here.  Only the ones I spent time with this past week and/or intend to spend time with in the coming week.  Besides Grace McCleen's novel I have ten more review copies lined up and there are more on the way:


These two NF which I began last winter and have posted a kind of reading journal for but need to get back to before I have to start over:



And So It goes by Charles J. Sheilds a bio of Kurt Vonegut

This Mobius Strip of Ifs by Mathias Freese a collection of personal essays

And these six ARC novels which I've have for weeks and in a few cases months:




The Variations by John Donatich

The Inquisitor by Mark Allen Smith

The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller  Nobel winner!!

Skios by Michael Frayn

How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti

The Sadness of the Samurai by Victor del Arbo


Two more review copies came in between Saturday and Sunday last week:  



Me, Who Dove into the Heart of the World by Sabina Berman

Winter Journal by Paul Auster a memoir from an American literary figure that really excites me

And this weekend two ebooks arrived:

Sulan (mentioned above)

Primal by Deborah Serra

If anyone reading this states a preference I may let it weigh my decision as to what I begin next from the above list.

I have been anxious to get back the library books I was reading before my first trip to Mom's in January but I'm still looking for my library card which I can't remember seeing since our move the day after Christmas.  I may just have to report it missing and get a new one.  Again.  The last time was just last fall.  I was sure it would turn up in the sorting and unpacking from the move but I've been through everything I think.

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Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier Read-a-Long--Party Time

The read-a-long for DuMaurier's Rebecca is having it's party/discussion at Sheila's Bookjourney today and tomorrow.

This was a re-read for me but the last time I read it was in my late teens over 30 years ago.  I was just a year or two younger than the heroine then and intensely identified with her.  Not just because of age but also station in life and personality/character.  I too was extremely shy, unable to imagine giving orders to my elders or asserting myself to anyone not a peer, and uber naive and innocent of the 'ways of the world'.

Because of the fundamentalist sect strictures of my childhood I could at that time still count the number of big screen movies I'd seen on one hand and only one of those had been rated R and that for violence not sex.  That probably explains why much of the promiscuous behavior of Rebecca that DuMaurier imparts via much innuendo went over my head back than and thus held much of its shock value intact for me this time.

I had remembered that Rebecca was a 'mean girl' a bully, a liar, manipulative, which of course made it impossible for me to identify with the heroine's assumptions that Rebecca was deservedly beloved and worthy of immulation.  So this time I was a bit irritated with her for not picking up on the many clues that she needn't be intimidated by nor try to live up to her predecessor's role in Maxim's nor the household's nor the community's memory.  Nor need she have felt less than in Maxim's eyes, constantly worried that he compared her unfavorably and possibly still loved love Rebecca.

But for that last I blame Maxim the most.  How is that he did not wish to protect the very naivete and innocence that drew him to his new wife by smoothing the way for her at Manderly?  He should have gone further than just refurbishing a new wing of the mansion for her, he should have had Rebecca erased from it--all of her clothing, belongings packed away or sold.  Including Mrs Danvers the housekeeper who had been in service to Rebecca from way before her marriage to Maxim.

But then there wouldn't have been a story.

I wish I'd have realized that DuMaurier had neglected intentionally to give her heroine her own given name.  She was the first person narrator and it is often easy to loose track of their names as the author can go for dozens of pages without having occasion to use it.  I wasted a lot of time racking my memory and trying to scan back over ebook pages looking for it.

So Rebecca's successor had only the name Mrs de Winter, one of the many hand-me-down things she shared with Rebecca.  Like the raincoat and the hanky in its pocket, the dogs, the writing desk, Mrs. Danvers and of course Maxim himself.  Having no name emphasized her struggle for identity as she is catapulted from one social milieu into another in which she has no clue how to be.

And Manderly, the estate itself, was also a hand-me-down with Rebecca's things and influences everywhere from the daily menus, time and ways for serving meals even to the choice of flowers to be displayed in each room and which table they set upon.  But the hand-me-downness of Manderly went beyond Rebecca to the many previous generations.  Du Maurier spent a lot of words emphasizing the routines--of the days, weeks and seasons--that perpetuate like the ticking of a clock at Manderlay.  Yet another layer of 'not me' for the heroine to be wrapped in that must be peeled off before she can be defined to herself and others as her own person.

How that develops I must not elaborate on here unless I were to put up a bg spoiler alert..

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Friday Forays in Fiction: Read-a-Long

I saw this at Sheila's Bookjourney earlier this week and went looking for an ebook, found one and started reading and then totally forgot to do the post and drop my link announcing I wanted in.

So here it is.

But things have changed since I decided to participate.  The travel date for my return home was moved from Saturday to Sunday the very day of the party at Sheila's I will have only limited time to blog hop on that day.

But I'm already deep into the story anyway and will want to follow up on what everyone else is saying about it even if I have to wait until Monday.

This is a re-read for me.  The first time was between 8th and 10th grade 14-16 years old.  I am not the same person I was then so it is a completely different experience.

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