Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

I had heard much about Bel Canto in the last few years and how it was a must read. It was not a book that I would have normally picked out as a must read for me, but it is included on my 2 book club reading lists this year and I will be hearing Ann Patchett lecture in November, so its time has come!

Katsumi Hosokawa has traveled from Japan to an unnamed South or Latin American country where his birthday will be celebrated at the home of the Vice President. He is being wooed by the country so that he will build a factory in the country, but he has come on the occasion of his birthday to hear Roxanne Coss, an operatic diva with whom he has been enamored. He is an operatic aficionado and the evening will be made special with her performance. However, immediately after her performance, the lights go out and the house is stormed by terrorists. The guests, including Hosokawa, Coss and the Vice-President are taken hostage by three generals and accompanying soldiers, most of whom are teens.

Throughout the course of the siege and novel that spans over four months, the reader sees a transformation in not only the hostages but also the captors. Since we know how the scenario will be played out, our attention is riveted to the changing relationship among the cast of characters. The lives of all are centered around music and the opera. Coss continues practicing, a new accompanist is found, and a prodigy is discovered. Love affairs are initiated even among the least likely of people. It is almost as if life inside the house has come to a sense of normalcy and comfort.

As much as music is a central theme in
Bel Canto, so is language. Gen Watanabe, Hosokawa's interpreter, is a pivotal character. Through his translations from Russian to Spanish to Japanese to French, the the secondary characters become able to communicate in another way. Despite his facility with the language, Gen has a very difficult time expressing himself until he works with Carmen, a terrorist, in helping her learn Spanish. Realizing that language is devisive in this situation the characters become dependent upon the Gen's ability to bring them together.

Patchett's strength in
Bel Canto is her ability to describe situations, characters, and setting in an almost poetic way. It mirrors the opera in its lyricism and rhythm. The reader sees in the following the metaphor for the captivity.
"The garua, the fog and mist, lifts after the hostages are in captivity for a number of weeks. "One would have thought that with so much rain and so little light the forward march of growth would have been suspended, when in fact everything had thrived"
I had expected to be blown away by this book considering all the press that has been devoted to it and its inclusion on the list of recommended reading for AP English, but I wasn't. Patchett's strength is in her mastery of words. Unfortunately, for me, at least, with the inclusion of the epilogue, she had too many. An interesting premise, to be sure, but not as gripping as I had wished.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson

In the Garden of Beasts was the October Selection for The Gables book group. Ironically, I had purchased this the day before I got the reading list for the year. I was excited that I was going to read a book that was actually on my "To Be Read" list. Larson has extensively researched (nearly 30 pages of references and citations) the tenure of William Dodd as U.S. ambassador to Germany during the rise of Hitler and Nazism.

This is the first Larson book that I have read and I found the writing to be interesting, engaging, and thought-provoking. William
Dodd was a learned professor at the University of Chicago. His interest was southern history and he was in the midst of completing a major treatise on the south when tapped to be the U.S. ambassador. He had studied in Leipzig, was fluent in German, a liberal, and seemed to fit the bill when no one could be found to take the position. He was given two hours by President Roosevelt to accept or refuse the post after it was offered. Upon his acceptance he moved his family: wife Mattie, son Bill and daughter Martha to Berlin. He was an atypical ambassador in that he didn't have a lot of money and he lived and acted frugally. As such he did little to ingratiate himself into the German diplomatic circles and was often the brunt of their jokes.

Maybe naivete is too strong of a word, but
Dodd really did not find the situation in Germany as alarming as it looks from the 21st century upon his arrival in Berlin. Despite the fact Jews and American Jews were being attacked and murdered, he seemed powerless to bring the urgency of the situation to Roosevelt or the German government. In reality, he believed as did most Americans that Hitler would lose his power base and fall from the leadership ranks. In the four years that the book covers the reader through Larson watches this belief change to one that reflects the urgency and abomination of the situation. He spoke out vehemently on one occasion, saying,
“You cannot expect world opinion of your conduct to moderate so long as eminent leaders like Hitler and Goebbels announce from platforms, as in Nuremberg, that all Jews must be wiped off the earth.”
In the Garden of Beasts chronicles not only William Dodd's life and work, but also that of his daughter, Martha's. In fact, she is almost the focus of the book. Martha was, to say the least, socially motivated and promiscuous. As a literary agent in Chicago, she was a very close friend of Carl Sandburg and Thornton Wilder. Later she added Thomas Wolfe to her conquests. As a resident of Berlin, she was enamored of the Nazi movement and counted a number of them as suitors, including Rudolf Diels, the first head of the Gestapo. But it is with Boris Vinogradov, an NKVD (Russian Secret Police) agent that she continues a prolonged love affair. Could it be that he is interested in her for the access to information that she has? Martha's story is intriguing and disturbing. She returns with her family and without Boris to the U.S. when Dodd resigns his post, but continues her intelligence collecting and eventually flees the country with her husband, Andrew Stern, when they are investigated as moles and communists.

It is easy to see why
In the Garden of Beasts rose quickly to the top of the NY Times best seller list. It is nonfiction, but reads like fiction. It gives insight, heretofore unchronicled, into the life of an ambassador in the most troubling time of a century. Larson investigates all the German hierarchy of the Third Reich and the reader can't help but be fascinated by some of their private lives. But more than that it is the life story of a down to earth family man who is trying to do what he can to preserve peace among nations and peoples. Don't miss this one.