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4 internautes sur 4 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
PLEASE AVOID!!, Mai 11 2004
Par Un client
I picked up this book from Amazon's main competitor because I overheard a vendor recommending it to another customer. BIG MISTAKE. This is probably the first review I write about anything I own and hopefully won't feel compelled to forewarn anybody about anything else. The writing is bad (not a good sign when you think you can make some recommendations to the author), the characters are not fully thought out and are caricatures of Latin American soap opera maids, ambassadors and guerrilla fighters. My guess is that Ann Patchett has never fully explored Latin American culture and hence does not understand what she was writing about. She probably never even sat down to think about what is the relationship one has with music because what she pours over and over in this awful book is the idea that music turns most everybody into a stupid creature (except for those who execute it). In addition to this book I bought Nick Hornby's "31 Songs," a book about the author's relationship to music in which he explores what it is that makes him -and us as well- fall for a song (a delightful read of another kind but one that shows that the author put some love into the writing process). Save your money and please do not buy this. Ah, besides, some of the Spanish words she uses are misspelled and some of the sentences are poorly constructed (grammar mistakes!). Help yourself... AVOID! By the way, I finished the book to see if the ending could be any worse than the rest of it... it was.
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3 internautes sur 3 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Tedious, Sep 24 2003
What's all this hype? As a reader of 2-3 books weekly, I found this beast boring to the point of tearing my hair out from boredom. Absolutely no action, and boring subject matter. This was my Book Club's September read, and if our leader assigns another like this (it ranks right up there with "Unless"), I'll find another book group to join.Long, laborious, filled with useless detail. The characters have no real definition - the reader knows all about them, but they are lifeless. Each of them, up to page 90 which is as far as I could force myself despite going back to this book 3 times, was more lifeless than the next. If the purpose of plot is to advance the story - please tell me what keeps this mess moving?????
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1 internautes sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Novel does not soar as high as an opera soprano's voice, Juil 26 2008
Many people had recommended this book to me, and eventually my book club chose it as our monthly selection. While I feel this novel is worth reading, it is by no means an easy read. The setting is the confines of a Vice President's home in a South American country, in which a group of inept and somewhat sympathetic terrorists take a group of international dignitaries and an opera diva hostage.
The narrative point of view shifts between several characters, never really allowing for full character development. The constant shifting between characters creates a choppy and clumsy writing style that is, at times, difficult to read. In addition, the plot takes an eternity to unfold, while the reader is repeatedly and redundantly shown how desirable and how beautiful the opera diva, Roxane Coss, is to the others. Annoyingly, the author also assumes that everyone, characters and readers alike, are enchanted by and enamoured with opera, and subsequently the opera singer and her vocal practices take centre stage over the issues of social justice the terrorists are trying to call attention to.
The last chapters of the novel generate the most narrative tension and excitement as the hostages and terrorists finally establish meaningful relationships with each other. The most striking contrast is between the privileged lives of the dignitaries and the opera star, who even in their confinement maintain this status, alongside the poverty and illiteracy of the terrorists, who really end up as the most interesting and sympathetic characters in the novel. The conclusion of the novel seems quite unfair, unjust, and unneccessary in light of other possibilities. [Amy MacDougall]
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1 internautes sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Boring and Shallow, Mai 7 2004
Par Un client
Thisis a novel consisted of character sketches and caricatures. The cardboard characters have no depth and they are too many. One keeps reading, not because one is so engaged in the plot, but with the desperate hope that the story may get better. But alas, the narrative remains boring and shallow-shallower that anything one has read. The writer has researched opera well, but has no knowledge of medicine and politics. The so called "terrorists" are caricatures who resemble Mexican cliches in Western movies and the "good hearted" diplomats and corporation owners (the guest/hostages) are either steryotyped according to their nationality or so sketchy that one forgets their existence, let alone caring about them. The soperano is a doll and the romance between her and the Japanese factory owner is not even a good melodrama. One wonders what is funny about all this? (if it's meant to be funny!) And dindn't the writer's editor remind her that one doesn't die of "lack of insulin" or one's face cannot be stitched with regular needle and thread without one practically passing out of intolerable pain? This Vice President who is being operated by the house maid feels so good in her arms that one wants to close the book right there, rush to the bookstore and get her money back. And a pack of ice take care of the pain, although it infects!!! On the whole this novel has so many serious flaws that the reader gets irritated at the author, the editor (who should have adviced her better) and the publisher. And why was it in the best seller list? Why the standards of literary novel have fallen so low in this country?
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1 internautes sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Listen to your heart!, Jui 27 2003
Par Un client
When I reached page 50 of Bel Canto, I told myself that this book wasn't going to be worth the time it would take to finish. It was boring, improbable--not in the good opera way; in the bad soap opera way--the characters were thin and uninteresting, and the storytelling was totally uninspiring. So I thought about putting it down. But, like so many people, I'm afraid, the reviews got the best of me. I'd heard such good things about this book, I thought I had to give it a chance. So over the next long, agonizing week, I finished the whole thing. For my efforts, I was rewarded with 250 pages of the same tedious junk and an ending so...I'm sorry, it's the only word...STUPID that you just won't believe it. You'll close the book and say...huh? You'll wonder what the hell was that all about. And you'll kick yourself for not stopping back at page 50.I don't know who writes these good reviews, but come on, people! This book is a complete stinker. Go ahead, if you don't believe me. Read it and see.
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Elegant but detached, Déc 29 2009
I'm about a third of a way through this very elegantly-written novel. The elegantly slow pace and artistic clarity of this novel overpower its artistic reality for me, unfortunately. On a very subjective level, it feels like listening to a beautiful piece of music that doesn't necessarily speak to me...
Having said that, I will probably soldier on for a little while longer, but unless the author starts playing around with its tempo, I might just give it up...
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Snorefest! zzzzzzzz!, Nov. 1 2009
After hearing and reading so many good things about this book, I figured it would be a winner. Well, the winning book theory never came to fruition. I made it to about page 130 and I gave up. I am one of those people that used to want to finish a book no matter how bad it was. Now, however, if a book does not capture my interest after 50-100 pages, I call it a day. Life is too short and there are too many good books to waste time on a bad one.
This book never goes anywhere. It is big on character description and that is about it. You get to about page 100 and it is still describing events and the many people in the book, but the story never gets off the ground.
Oh, and the premise is stupid I may add. Opera music can create and instill such love that terrorists and hostages differences can be overcome? Give me a break. Also, the hostages are in this house in a foreign country for months and months? Very far-fetched story.
I do not know what happens in this book after page 130, and perhaps it does get better, but, I did not stick around to find out. This book moves so slowly and it is just plain and simple a snorefest! I do not understand all of the praise that this book and its author has received. The author is too descriptive and redundant.
Don't waste your time with this severely overrated book.
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Simply unputdownable!!, Déc 29 2005
What makes this book so special for me is not simply that it's a page-turner, but that I was taken by the novel whose storyline interests me not at all. Generally I am not at all attracted to this genre of novels and the setting of the novel (some unspecified small dictatorship) and the characters did not sell themselves to me. But once I read the first few pages, I was completely gripped! Ann Patchett has a magical way with words and is simply a born storyteller. [I'm now reading another novel of hers (her first one - the Patron Saint of Liars) and have just bought the Magician's Assistant) She paces her novels well, and this is most evident in Bel Canto. The reader goes through a whole rollercoaster of emotions - the touching comradeship that developes among the hostages and hostage-takers, the evolving friendships, loyalties and love that transpires between the main characters. When the final page is turned, the reader is left with a devastating sense of loss - partly from the startling way the story was concluded and partly just from the fact that there is no more to read. I just wish the author was older so that she could have more works to her name.
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Worth Reading, Juil 17 2005
Art can serve so many different functions at such times: it can ease our minds, build sympathy for other humans, show us that life doesn't have to be as bad as what we see on television every day. In her mesmerizing "Bel Canto", Ann Patchett develops a similar theme, dealing with the redemption, through art, of humanity from the petty political bonds that keep them separated. As the novel begins, in a war-torn South American country, we see a gathering of high society at a birthday party. They're hearing the singing of Roxanne Coss, a famous soprano. The lights go out, then turn back on: terrorists have entered the mansion, to take over the gathering. The book's method of setting forth characters, and allowing them to develop both on their own and in relation to everybody else, contributes greatly to its richness and depth. So does Patchett's lovely prose, full of implication and hidden meaning, but never decadent. The most rewarding aspect of "Bel Canto", however, is its message: that in the middle of the silliness of politics, with all its vague bluster about principle, threat and obligation, what can save people from their own insignificant games is simply the glory of art. That's a message with great resonance for our own times. I often feel slightly ashamed when I'm trying to read a book, and there's a television on in the room: CNN distracts from the bliss of the book I'm reading, and I'm pulled out of the platonic realm of literature into the harsh reality of the world's situations. And it's that aspect of the uneasy tension between art and politics that Patchett captures here. I hate to spoil the plot for a first-time reader, and so I'll only say that by the end of the novel, even the supposed aggressors have fallen under art's rapture. Roxanne Coss, the great soprano who only came to the gathering to entertain because it paid well, ends up being a siren, a Muse, the representation of art - which seems to be, in the end, all that really stays. In putting forth this message, Ann Patchett is hardly being frivolous; instead, what she's doing is demonstrating that politics may be important, but art is the fuel that keeps us running. At various moments throughout the book, the gathering seems on the verge of collapse - and only simple, humane gestures hold it together. The plot of the book moves along capably; agonized internal musings on the part of each character, described with skill in Patchett's lovingly omniscient authorial voice, add to the complexity of the situation it describes. One of the more important themes of "Bel Canto" is the idea that communication can extend across the boundaries of language. The gathering's only translator quickly finds himself overworked by the polyglot babble - but eventually, the people present somehow learn to communicate with few words. If I've been vague in my description, that's deliberate: the plot needs to unfold for the reader, with all its layers of mystery and allegory, unhampered by previous expectations. This book is about war - an intimate war between deluded terrorists (whose political alignments, significantly, are never really revealed), but there's little emphasis on the horrors of war; rather, Ann Patchett chooses to focus on how art - especially the beauty of music - can save people from themselves. I can think of few messages more appropriate for our troubled times. Patchett has woven an engrossing fiction about opera, terrorism, and Stockholm Syndrome - and her own artistic achievement is that she's able to make it all come together so perfectly, but try it for yourself! Pick up a copy. Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Ann Patchett, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.
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Worth Reading, Jui 17 2005
Art can serve so many different functions at such times: it can ease our minds, build sympathy for other humans, show us that life doesn't have to be as bad as what we see on television every day. In her mesmerizing "Bel Canto", Ann Patchett develops a similar theme, dealing with the redemption, through art, of humanity from the petty political bonds that keep them separated. As the novel begins, in a war-torn South American country, we see a gathering of high society at a birthday party. They're hearing the singing of Roxanne Coss, a famous soprano. The lights go out, then turn back on: terrorists have entered the mansion, to take over the gathering. The book's method of setting forth characters, and allowing them to develop both on their own and in relation to everybody else, contributes greatly to its richness and depth. So does Patchett's lovely prose, full of implication and hidden meaning, but never decadent. The most rewarding aspect of "Bel Canto", however, is its message: that in the middle of the silliness of politics, with all its vague bluster about principle, threat and obligation, what can save people from their own insignificant games is simply the glory of art. That's a message with great resonance for our own times. I often feel slightly ashamed when I'm trying to read a book, and there's a television on in the room: CNN distracts from the bliss of the book I'm reading, and I'm pulled out of the platonic realm of literature into the harsh reality of the world's situations. And it's that aspect of the uneasy tension between art and politics that Patchett captures here. I hate to spoil the plot for a first-time reader, and so I'll only say that by the end of the novel, even the supposed aggressors have fallen under art's rapture. Roxanne Coss, the great soprano who only came to the gathering to entertain because it paid well, ends up being a siren, a Muse, the representation of art - which seems to be, in the end, all that really stays. In putting forth this message, Ann Patchett is hardly being frivolous; instead, what she's doing is demonstrating that politics may be important, but art is the fuel that keeps us running. At various moments throughout the book, the gathering seems on the verge of collapse - and only simple, humane gestures hold it together. The plot of the book moves along capably; agonized internal musings on the part of each character, described with skill in Patchett's lovingly omniscient authorial voice, add to the complexity of the situation it describes. One of the more important themes of "Bel Canto" is the idea that communication can extend across the boundaries of language. The gathering's only translator quickly finds himself overworked by the polyglot babble - but eventually, the people present somehow learn to communicate with few words. If I've been vague in my description, that's deliberate: the plot needs to unfold for the reader, with all its layers of mystery and allegory, unhampered by previous expectations. This book is about war - an intimate war between deluded terrorists (whose political alignments, significantly, are never really revealed), but there's little emphasis on the horrors of war; rather, Ann Patchett chooses to focus on how art - especially the beauty of music - can save people from themselves. I can think of few messages more appropriate for our troubled times. Patchett has woven an engrossing fiction about opera, terrorism, and Stockholm Syndrome - and her own artistic achievement is that she's able to make it all come together so perfectly, but try it for yourself! Pick up a copy. Another book I need to recommend -- completely unrelated to Ann Patchett, but very much on my mind since I purchased a "used" copy off Amazon is "The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition" by Richard Perez, an exceptional, highly entertaining little novel I can't stop thinking about.
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Ce produit
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Bel Canto par Ann Patchett (Paperback - Avril 11 2002)
D'occasion et Neuf à partir de : CDN$ 0.01
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Bel Canto par Ann Patchett (Paperback - Jui 2 2008)
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