Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2024--San Antonio

Bel Cando by Ann Patchett was named by TIME as one of the Top 100 books of the 2000s.  It was a book I never wanted to put down.  The story of a situation in an unnamed South American country involving a group of guerrilla fighters and a group of hostages, it follows the months after a failed attempt to capture the president of the country at a birthday party arranged for a Japanese industrialist who is a fan of the top female opera performer in the world.  In a desperate attempt to get a new factory, the country, which has been unsuccessful in getting the industrialist to come there previously, throws the birthday party with the opera singer as the entertainment and an enticement.  The result is a comedy of errors.  The industrialist comes only because of the opera singer and still has no interest at all in building a factory there.  The opera singer comes only because she has an upcoming concert in Buenos Aries and is curious about this Japanese industrialist who is aware of her and has traveled around the world to hear her perform several times.  The birth date of the industrialist is on a Tuesday, but the President is a fan of a very popular soap opera that is on TV on Tuesday nights and never allows anything on his calendar to conflict with staying home and watching the show.  The president agrees to the party because of the need for the hoped-for factory, but secretly plans to back out of attending at the last minute.  The party is to be held at the home of the vice-president, and the guerrillas have an elaborate plan of entering the home in advance through the vents for the air conditioning system and coming out as a surprise at the end of the opera singer's performance to capture the president and whisk him away quickly during all the confusion.  Trying to find the absent president among the crowd eats up so much time that word of what is happening gets out via phone calls, and the military and police arrive to surround the house.  The stand-off begins and lasts for months with the guerrillas trying to make unreasonable and often changing demands and the government never making offers of anything but surrender by the guerrillas and release of the captives.  The real story is what happens during the first weeks and eventually months of captivity within the compound.  Relationships begin to develop.  Guerrillas begin to care for their captives and vice versa.  Strict enforcement of rules by the guerrillas slowly falls to the wayside.  Daily life under the circumstances is better for the guerrillas than it has ever been for them in the jungles.  And the captives also come to realize that life without the responsibilities of their professional lives has its advantages for them.  The reader will learn to care for many among both the guerrillas and the captives and to wish that everything could be resolved with everyone going free.  Is there any chance for that?  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.