BOOK REVIEW: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Writing a review of Bel Canto feels like writing the obituary of a long-lost friend who has just been found.

It touches something inside – something  rarely feel-able in this time of so much contention among so many different warring creeds, peoples, and thoughts. It reminds me that while something may have passed away from a troubled world, deep-down we may yet be touched anew and energized at rare times in our lives. Bel Canto heralds one of those times.

It is a feeling of love. Real love, universal love, not the everyday family-and-friends type,  but the kind that extends to all people at all times and which resonates with Jesus’ declaration that he has come, died and been resurrected for “all people.”

So while I write at the beginning of Holy Week, it is still a tough review to write for other reasons. The story is too beautiful to commit to the mere words of another writer. Patchett is the only person who could have written it. She is a “virtuoso,” says her publisher Harper Collins. And Bel Canto is her “most exquisite” work, The New York Times writes. In other words, you have to read it to get it.

Set in an unnamed Latin American city, a lavish reception for a visiting world-class opera singer is interrupted by a terrorist attack. A rough-hewn but disciplined band of armed thugs from the jungle forces everyone – the celebrated opera star included – to the floor and the warriors take over, making their nonnegotiable demands of the authorities which soon arrive outside the walled compound of he nation’s vice-presidential mansion.

Sounds like game, set, match … but the book’s just getting started when that happens. Its beauty is to come in the unfolding, which is simply one of the most remarkable stories I have ever read. At first it moves along at a barely perceptible pace. But you can feel it. Then you see a larger story building itself, bejeweled along the way by a strange and unexpected symbiosis of terrorists and their high-toned captives.

“…he had no secrets then and now he did: it was that now there was something that was strictly between himself and one other person, that it was something that was completely their own that it would have been pointless to even try to speak of it to someone else…”

That’s it. Anything else would be what they call “spoilers". So spoil yourself, and read this amazing piece of literary genius.

And, of course, you can always buy it through Ms. Patchett’s now-famous Nashville bookstore, Parnassus Books.

*   *   *

Click here for a link to Parnassus Books

And here for a link to Ann Patchett’s interview with TerryGross on NPR’s Fresh Air

And here for a New York Times review of Ms. Patchett’s latest book, along with commentary on her style and career.

What every boy needs to know about sex

When I was working on my memoir, WarBaby, I doodled about some of the highlights of my growing up. One memory stands out. It was about sex and the public library.

I was 17. That was many years ago – days when students were required to do hard research and write original papers that had damned well have been at least C-grade in quality. A long time ago, for sure.

I came to love libraries in those days. I did much of my research for papers in the main city  library. It was near my father’s office. After school I’d ride the bus downtown, work in the library and then ride home with my dad.

One day, I was browsing in the library and I came across a book entitled What Every 16-Year-Old Boy Should Know About Sex. Well, being 17, I suddenly developed an overwhelming desire to see if I had missed anything.

I slid the book in with the three or so others I had picked out and approached the check-out lady. She processed my books until she got to The One. The quince-like expression of her face reminded me of Lily Tomlin as The Telephone Lady on the old Laugh-In TV show. (Tells you a bit about how long ago this was, eh?)

“I’m sorry,” she said with a salacious smirk. “You can’t check this book out.”

“Why?” I said. “I’m 17, and the book’s for 16-year-olds.”

“But you have to be 18 to check out books of this nature,” she replied, the salacious smirk morphing into a Leni-Riefenstahl-wannabe grimace.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, asking for the name and address of the head librarian to whom I later wrote.

(His reply was classic bureaucratese – wordswordswords, all saying yesnoyesnoyesno and my favorite “notwithstanding our commitment to learning…”)

I dealt with it. I waited out the bureaucracy. And when I turned 18, I went back and got That Book.

They should have called it What Every Ten-Year-Old Boy Already Knows About Sex. 

The poetry group's meeting

Once all were cozy

I started reading me poesy

in the dim-lit den

of a house with drawn blinds.

We brooked no interruption

from the noise and disruption

of the world in turmoil outside.

Just a little poesy,

with mayhap a nip of rosey,

as we sought some cheer for the ear.

But things have a way

of bringing a fray

when someone gets nosey.

So it was no surprise

when I came to surmise

a stranger snuck into our midst.

It was our vanity

to keep our sanity

by leaving warp and woof outside.

And here was this dude

with the potential for rude

interruption of our rosey and poesy.

But no posey lover

under cleverer cover

had ever darkened our door.                                             

For through fates unknown

into our midst he’d been thrown

to escape all the woofing and warping.

So we welcomed him as guest

perceiving his quest

to be one with ours perforce.

And we had quaffed enough rosey

to invite his initiation by poesy

so the test was laid out for him thusly:

You can join our merry band

and we’ll gladly lend a hand

if you can pass this one little test

Promise never to pitch

a line with a twitch

like…

     “There once was a man from Nantucket…”