on beauty

I finished reading Ann Pachett's Bel Canto about a week ago and I have been mulling over what I want to say about it here. 

Two aspects of the book stand out to me.  The first, is the magical texture of it.  On the surface, Bel Canto  is a fairly straight forward story of a group of terrorists in an unnamed South American country that take a group of high profile party goers hostage.  The Amazon review references the narrative's "omniscience of magic realism," but for me, the fabulist nature of the book lies not in the ability to see into each characters' thoughts, but in the thoughts themselves.

For a book that purports to be about terrorism gone awry, the characters are consumed with beauty.  This should be expected given the book's title and even the book jacket's focus on music.  But the transportative nature of opera and beauty, the way every character is overwhelmed by it, defies realism.  I am not digging opera here, it is not a question of musical form.  But the characters' thoughts about the arias and their emotions ebb, flow, and swirl around each other in a way that is as harmonious as the music itself.

By allowing music to hold such power over a group of desperate people--terrorists and hostages alike--and allowing that music to overcome their situation, Pachett writes an ode to beauty.  It is not realistic, it is not intended to be, but it is true.

The next stand out aspect of the writing is how perfectly Pachett sets up the ending.  Early on in the book, she tells the readers how the story will conclude.  It is a casual line, easily enough missed or ignored except that you don't.  And so for the rest of the book, as you grow to love and understand these characters, the conclusion colors each scene.

Like the characters, you find yourself determined that the ending you've been told will come is not inevitable.  Pachett was wrong.  It was just a throw away line, maybe you misread it.  But you, like each character, know the truth of their situation.  I found myself bargaining.  I found myself in denial.  I found myself undergoing the very same emotions as the characters, right through the epilogue.

While Pachett might have set out to write an ode to the power of music, she also created a testament to the beauty of literature.