Siege tactics

Week 52: Bel Canto – Ann Patchett
Recommended by: Kate Hind

And so the fifty-second week is here, along with my final book choice. Fortunately it was a good one – thanks Kate! – so I am able to say fairly enough that I have gone out with a bang...

Which is a fairly good lead into Bel Canto, which is based around a highly-charged attempted kidnapping as terrorists storm a dinner party in Latin America. Sadly the president didn't make it to the event (he was at home watching his favourite soap) and instead a siege begins with a motley crew of prisoners and guards. It's the mish-mash of unlikely characters brought together in a later Douglas Copeland novel (with the angst, minus the pop culture references), with a good dose of farce stirred into the pot, and coming from the pen of Kazuo Ishiguro. And what's more, it works.

We see the characters develop as the novel progresses and start to form unlikely relationships, the lines between detainers and detainees blurring. It's Stockholm Syndrome en masse, arguably on both sides, as several key players reveal hitherto hidden talents and love even begins to blossom. One could criticise it for being unrealistic and jumping the shark, but there is a lightness of touch and a playfulness to the writing that says satire rather than silliness. And on top of all of this, there is a steady tension throughout because, as we are repeatedly told, such situations Never End Well.

One of the key themes running throughout is music and two of the main characters are an American opera singer and a Japanese businessman who is her biggest fan. I know next to nothing about opera or classical music in general, but it's clear Patchett does and her love of it comes forth in the prose, which is one reason I was reminded of Ishiguro. The steady rhythms of relationships building, the rise and fall of dramatic moments, and the build towards a crescendo are also all reminiscent of a piece of music.

It's a very well-written, deftly drawn piece of work; a character study with a sense of humour and some serious messages. It even "zip[ped] along", one of Stella Rimington's much-criticised criteria for judging the Booker Prize in 2011. Bel Canto did win the Orange Prize for Fiction around the turn of the century and this is one prize winner I feel was fully deserving of the accolade.