Bel Canto (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)

Name: Bel Canto (Harper Perennial Deluxe Editions)
Price: 15.49 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.3 (12437 reviews)
Author: Ann Patchett
ISBN: 9780061565311

Ann Patchett

4.3 out of 5

12,437 global ratings

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Winner of the Orange Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

"Bel Canto is its own universe. A marvel of a book." —Washington Post Book World

**A beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition of Ann Patchett’s spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis. **

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.

Patchett'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.

About the authors

Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett is the author of six novels, including Bel Canto, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction. She writes for the New York Times Magazine, Elle, GQ, the Financial Times, the Paris Review and Vogue.

Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, The Magician's Assistant, Run, State of Wonder, Commonwealth, The Dutch House, and Tom Lake.

She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Joan M Neigbauer

Delightful read

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2024

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Book arrived on time and in good condition. As with other Patchett books, the story and character development was excellent and surprising. I was sorry when it ended.

Sara RC

Beauty Unbounded

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2024

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In the midst of terror, love and beauty reign sublime. This is the theme of Patchett’s ode to the joy of living unbound by the shackles of unwanted circumstances. Bel Canto becomes a morality tale of utmost value as we seek to live and love in our contemporary world wrought with uncertainty, war, and discord. She weaves a beautiful story which challenges us to see beyond culture, beyond language, beyond appearance and wealth to the soul of what it is to be human. Brava!

Kindle Customer

Revolutionary Song

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024

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A story to steal your heart. When a revolutionary group in a small country raids a party to.capture a president and end up taking over 200 international diplomats and guests hostage, they find that a single small woman with the voice of an angel captures them and transforms everyone involved instead. A beautifully told and mesmerizing story you will carry in your heart for the rest of your life!

wvfgolden

Everything but the epilogue

Reviewed in the United States on September 15, 2023

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Well written. Very descriptive and artistic with colors you can see and sound you can hear. Skip the epilogue and it's a great story.

5 people found this helpful

MizEl

Begnnng draws in the reader, middle drags, ending creates impression author just wanted to finish.

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2024

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The story started off promising then way too slowly devolved into a predictable climax in which the writer indulged in the use of a handy, though entirely too convenient, sleight of hand to wrap up an impossible situation in the easiest, most unimaginative manner. And the epilogue? Where did that come from? Why did Patchett spend several hundred pages on character development, and then conclude the story with a scene so trite and unbefitting of her protagonists that it totally exceeded any reasonable bound of credibility?

3 people found this helpful