Read my full review here:https://tessasworldofthings.blogspot.de/2015/09/bel-canto-by-ann-patchett.htmlNow, imagine there's this Japanese electronics mogul Katsumi Hosokawa and you're the president of a small, impoverished South American country. You want him to invest in your country and the only way to get him to travel to wherever you are is, by throwing him a birthday party and engaging his favorite opera singer Roxanne Coss. So you hire her for the party and she, Hosokawa, his interpreter plus about 200 other businessmen, foreign diplomats and members of your own government (including your vice president) attend the party in the vice president's house. The only one who is not partaking is you, because you are the president and your favorite soap opera is airing right during party-time.Now imagine further, that during this festivity a few members of the rebel group "La Familia de Martin Suarez" crash the party by taking everybody hostage, because they want to take (only) the president (who is at home watching a soap opera) hostage, in order to bring down the government. Since that won't work, they just take everybody hostage, but later allow all the servants and women go, except of course the opera singer. After that the kidnappers are stuck with the most important and most likely to receive a large ransom, which makes all in all about 60 people.That's basically the plot of this book, and of course (I almost forgot) that the hostage-taking lasted for more than four months. "Bel Canto" describes the life of the hostages, the bonds and friendships that are formed, as well as the conflict of starting to like your kidnappers, because you just basically live on top of each other every single day.

This book reminded me of a movie I once saw called Diplomacy. It's set in the office of a Nazi general during WWII. Another man, a diplomat (I think from Sweden or Norway) comes to see him, because there is a plan to bomb the hell out of Paris, and the diplomat wants the general to stop it. It's basically just the two of them talking for two hours, but it was so well done that I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. That movie came to mind when I was reading this book. Not much is happening most of the time, but there's a tension thread running through the whole story. I found the ending somewhat shocking and disappointing. I guess that's similar to life sometimes, though? Still, not what I was expecting, in a bad way.