Bel Canto
Ann Patchett, 2001
An opera singer, a birthday party in a grand house, and guests who never go home: a novel about what people become when ordinary time stops.
Ann Patchett
Patchett took the premise from the 1996 Lima hostage crisis, when guerrillas seized the Japanese ambassador's residence mid-party; she left the country in her novel deliberately unnamed.
Feels like art, longing and love.
Where you keep your real life while you go out and meet obligations.
He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn’t for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love. Books by Ann Patchett
Authors with a similar feel
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
BookFeed is a feed of real passages from real books. It learns what moves you and finds your next book.
Open BookFeedFree, no sign-up.