a case study on the human capacity to find routine

*MILD SPOILERS AHEAD!*


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​This feels like a case study on human instincts and capacities to make sense of things that are pretty much unexplainable. I sit to write this feeling like trying to summarize or make my way through the intricacies of this novel's plot isn't quite the way I want this review to go, because it seems like a complicated feat, yes, but also because I feel like this novel's left me thinking more about psychological phenomena than anything else. I loved the cast of characters, certainly, and how their countries of origin, languages, backgrounds, and reasons for being at Mr. Hosokawa's birthday party all vary so much. But the interweaving stories, desires, and fears of all these different people, written in such gripping third-person omniscient POV, has led me to ask myself how I would've fared (and changed) were I in their shoes.
I think this book has moments of great uncomfortability because it gives an unbridled showcase of so many different characters' thoughts within a very high stakes situation. Chiefly, the obsession the men have over Roxanne Coss, the opera singer of such high fame and importance, came off as a bit too male gaze-y for me at times. While it's certainly honest, and one woman trapped with 39 men enamored by her musical talent and femininity are bound to indulge in some fantasies, it resurfaced a little more than I thought necessary in the plot itself. I have to say in the same breath that this honest look at so many of the characters made the hostage situation seem so much more real, and the once singularly brutal, uncivilized, violent captors much easier to sympathize with as humans desperate to fight for a cause they believe in enough to risk their lives. All of their abilities to settle into the rhythms of living in the house together, making dinners and playing chess and watching television and listening to an opera singer make sure she hasn't lost her spark and falling in love, remind me that humans can make routine and maintain sanity pretty much anywhere at any time if they have the drive to. The way that this fact unites the entire cast of characters made the ending that much harder to read, too.
The character development for Carmen really took my breath away, as well as the slow but intentional development of each quiet romance. The fact that I started this book with no idea what could or might happen and finished it with such a clear sense of how each platonic as well as romantic relationship fits together like puzzle pieces is brilliant. The differences between Roxanne/Hosokawa, Gen/Carmen, and Thibault/Edith are astounding to me, and also made me think a lot about how quickly someone can examine the validity of a marriage vow when one is very aware that their clock is ticking.
Time was such an interesting construct in this novel. How it stretches to encompass nearly five months of the hostages' imprisonment turned peaceful cohabitation with their captors. How it causes each individual's reflection on how they lived their lives before that fateful night. How it also causes them to examine what they want to do with the rest of their lives if they ever make it out of the house. I think the last 20% or so of the book hinges on that concept of time being finite and leading people to outcomes or relationships they never could've dreamed for themselves but now can't imagine being taken from them. When the final few pages unfolded in painfully quick descriptions and dialogue, I felt genuine tears welling up in my eyes. It was an inevitable end I should've and did see coming, but when it still happened, I still cried. Which leads me to my main gripe with this novel---the ending.
I understand how it works in a bittersweet, slightly askew sort of way (or at least I think I do), but I also don't see the payoff of just telling readers that Gen and Roxane are together and in love in the epilogue. We have no idea how much time has passed since the events of the last chapter, and for so much time to have been spent drawing out and describing the romances of these characters with separate people only for the book to end like this felt like a letdown. Perhaps that was exactly Patchett's intention---life can't let the circumstances of an impossible situation with two impossibly different sets of people end happily, even where love is involved. And if that's the case, bravo to Patchett, really. I just have to sit with this reality for a while. Another bravo: This book has proven to stick with me for at least the few hours that have passed since I closed it. 




Some of my favorite quotes from Bel Canto:

"True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out into the world and met the obligations required of you."

"These people who detain us so pleasantly may decide to shoot us after all. It is a possibility. And if that is the case, then why should I carry this love with me to the other world? Why not give to you what is yours?"

"She wished she could tap on the glass and wave to him, but it was a miraculous thing to be able to watch the person you love undetected, as if you were a stranger seeing them for the first time."

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