This quiz is about the novel, Bel Canto.

(3)

Title: Captive Audience

Author(s): James Polk

Publication Details: New York Times Book Review. (June 10, 2001): p37.

Source: Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 244. Detroit: Gale. From Literature Resource Center.

Document Type: Critical essay

Full Text:

[(review date 10 June 2001) In the following review, Polk praises Bel Canto for its subtle rendering of character and its insights into the possibilities for human connection.]

In December 1996, 14 members of the Tupac Amaru guerrilla group entered the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, seized nearly 600 hostages and demanded the release of a number of political prisoners. The resulting siege lasted four months, captured international headlines and ended in a bloody assault by the Peruvian military.

Loosely inspired by that event, Ann Patchett's fourth novel [Bel Canto] is set in the vice-presidential mansion of an unnamed South American capital, where some 200 foreign diplomats, government officials and businessmen have gathered to celebrate the birthday of a Japanese electronics mogul and opera buff named Katsumi Hosokawa.

The not-so-subtle intention is to charm the industrialist into investing in the host country, something he has no intention of doing. Even so, he has been unable to resist the bait that's been dangled before him: a recital by the lyric soprano Roxane Coss. Mr. Hosokawa has already attended 18 of her performances in concert halls around the world, often inventing business trips that will place him in the audience. But never before has he heard her in such a close, intimate setting. Although he feels twinges of guilt for accepting the invitation, the opportunity is too rare to be missed.

One who does miss it is the country's president, unwilling to forgo a climactic moment in his favorite television program. To him, no number of glorious arias and no number of supposed commercial opportunities are worth missing the valiant attempts of a soap-opera heroine named Maria to free herself from captivity.

His obsession with Maria's fate also causes President Masuda to miss experiencing captivity himself, when members of a rebel group called La Familia de Martin Suarez storm the vice-presidential mansion.

At first, Bel Canto seems a departure for Patchett, whose previous novels have demonstrated her precise eye for the shadings of human interaction played out on small stages: a performer's widow trying to find an independent self in The Magician's Assistant, a runaway bringing meaning to her life at a home for unwed mothers in The Patron Saint of Liars, a former musician recovering his identity in Taft. But despite its larger frame, what gives this novel its power is Patchett's flair for sketching the subtleties of her characters' behavior.

Barely has the occupation of the mansion gotten under way when the wider issues of international affairs recede and the intricacies of the relationships between (and among) captors and captives come to the fore. In this crisis, Mr. Hosokawa's translator, Gen Watanabe, who, despite an extraordinary bent for languages, "was often at a loss for what to say when left with only his own words," discovers both his voice and his emotions. Vice President Iglesias assumes the dual roles of housekeeper and gracious host as the standoff stretches on. And Tetsuya Kato, a Nansei Electronics vice president with "a reputation for being very good with numbers," lets his artistic soul take wing. Most interesting, Roxane, the lone woman remaining after many of the hostages are released, realizes the true power of the music that has been her life's work, causing her to sing "as if she was saving the life of every person in the room."

Unfortunately, Patchett strains a bit too hard to give the revolutionaries similar dimensions. Among the occupiers of the mansion are a young man who learns chess simply from observing a few games and another who reveals himself as a musical prodigy by mimicking Roxane. While these humanizing details bring poignant scope to the novel's early warning that the terrorists "would not survive the ordeal," they also diminish the story's taut ambivalence, making some scenes near the end sound almost like accounts of a Boy Scout jamboree.

Nevertheless, especially early on, Bel Canto often shows Patchett doing what she does best--offering fine insights into the various ways in which human connections can be forged, whatever pressures the world may place upon them.

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Polk, James. "Captive Audience." New York Times Book Review (10 June 2001): 37. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 244. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.