Reading Bel Canto, post-lockdown
Ann Patchett's Bel Canto was one of those books I knew I should read and I got it from the library last week. It was beautiful. I really enjoyed it. There are three things I really wanted to think about. Vague spoilers ensue.
Firstly, it's written in a third-person omniscient that Patchett described as 'Anna Karenina-third'. It passes around, floats lightly.
So the pov feels like an elegant representation of the people, the hive mind, the closeness. And otherwise, who would be the pov character? Gen, most probably, but it would miss a lot. A chapter at a time? That feels too strictly compartmentalised. The pov feels communal - like their life.
The rest of my thoughts are around something Patchett did not intend, because this was published in 2001 and inspired by events from 1996-7. But lockdown. It felt like lockdown. Some of the reviews at the time questioned stuff that seems easier to accept having gone through lockdown.
The passivity. The acceptance. How quickly people can recalibrate to a new normal. The outside world fading away. Being stripped of external stuff like work and not being able to see family. How you can create a pocket of the world, out of nothing. It all made complete sense to me.
And then how important things like art, in this case opera, or singing at least, become. The opera thread feels fully like singing off balconies in lockdown. Keeping everyone connected and sane.
Piano, chess, cooking, looking after the house, learning languages, gardening... it's so lockdown. They just needed a sourdough starter.
Not unrelated to lockdown but perhaps a third area, is how we can exist in multiple realities. Hostages, but friends. Only here now, but thinking about the future.
There's a fatalism early on - either the terrorists or the government will shoot them. Then there's almost the same level of fear of it ending in any way. The inevitability of loss. I hate it, but I love it.
This element was incredibly persuasive for me. I absolutely got carried away with the characters. That César can become an opera star in Italy. That Ismael can live with Ruben. That Carmen and Gen can be happy. Patchett takes us with the characters, on the same journey as them, and it's so clever.
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