Bel Canto has always been one of those nebulous books where I definitely knew OF it but I had no clue what it was about. I was intrigued when Nadia @the.storygraph included it in her past series of revisiting five-star books and seeing if they still lived up to their five stars. We were discussing remaining challenge prompts and when I said I still needed a Women's Prize winner for Reading Women, she offered this one!
.
I was slightly worried when I started it because it took me a while to get into it. The first 70 pages were, to put it not very delicately at all, boring. If you know me at all, you'll know that I love a slow-burn, character-driven novel, but there was just no spark... But given that I am a completionist and I knew Nadia liked it, I persevered and in the end Patchett did manage to hook me into the story.
.
The premise is many important government officials from all over the world have gathered in an unnamed country for a birthday party for a Japanese official, ft. his favourite opera singer. The president is rumoured to be in attendance, so a terrorist group decides to hold them all captive. Plot twist, the president isn't there but they all stay hostages anyway. The book centres around the weeks and months spent there, with relationships budding between the captives and the capturers..
.
The best part for me was Gen, a young Japanese translator with an affinity for languages. I loved him and his dynamics with other characters, since he is needed for basically every interaction between groups to act as an interpreter. I'm not sure if Patchett meant to go into translation theory and the responsibilities of the translator, but she did and I liked it!
.
However, that epilogue... I'd have been happy to just stop reading after the brilliant ending and never read those four pages. It all felt very forced and unrealistic, so that was a bit disappointing to say the least! I'm not mad I read this one, some very enjoyable parts and Patchett's writing is lovely, but overall just a bit... unconvincing.