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Bel Canto
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
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Publisher's summary
“Blissfully Romantic.... A strange, terrific, spellcasting story.” (San Francisco Chronicle)
“Bel Canto...should be on the list of every literate music lover. The story is riveting, the participants breathe and feel and are alive, and throughout this elegantly-told novel, music pours forth so splendidly that the reader hears it and is overwhelmed by its beauty.” (Lloyd Moss, WXQR)
“Glorious.” (The New Yorker)
Ann Patchett’s award winning, New York Times best-selling Bel Canto balances themes of love and crisis as disparate characters learn that music is their only common language. As in Pratchett’s other novels, including Truth & Beauty and The Magician’s Assistant, the author’s lyrical prose and lucid imagination make Bel Canto a captivating story of strength and frailty, love and imprisonment, and an inspiring tale of transcendent romance.
Critic reviews
- 2002 Orange Prize for Fiction
- Book Sense Book of the Year Award Winner, Paperback, 2003
- PEN/Faulkner Award Winner, 2002
"Patchett can be counted on to deliver novels rich in imaginative bravado and psychological nuance. This fluid and assured narrative...demonstrates her growing maturity and mastery of form." (Publishers Weekly)
"Mixing art and politics can have unexpected results, but rarely are they so poignant....[Anna Fields'] performance is the essence of Bel Canto, easy, pure of tone, with an agile, precise vocal technique." (AudioFile)
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Art is as much a part of human nature as breathing. Since the dawn of time, humans have taken to creating in various forms and schools, with all manner of reception. Whether beloved or highly critiqued, art is a fixture of culture and what it means to be alive. To inspire your creativity, we’ve compiled a list of the best quotes about art. From painting to dance, art has been enriching the world for centuries. Get inspired to share your passion with some amazing quotes.
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Alice and her three closest friends meet the enigmatic Jack Wyck. Enticed by his philosophy and the promise of a constant party, Alice and her friends join Mr. Wyck's small group of devoted followers. Their idyll takes an increasingly sinister turn. Mr. Wyck's grand scheme goes wrong, culminating in a night of horrific murders.
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Mixed feelings - you may love it - or not!
- By C. Vincent on 04-19-16
By: Beth Hahn
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The Star Side of Bird Hill
- By: Naomi Jackson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Two sisters, ages 10 and 16, are exiled from Brooklyn to Bird Hill in Barbados, after their mother can no longer care for them. The young Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne, live, for the summer of 1989, with their grandmother, Hyacinth, a midwife and practitioner of the local spiritual practice of obeah. Dionne spends the summer in search of love, testing her grandmother's limits, and wanting to go home. Phaedra explores Bird Hill, where her family has lived for generations.
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My absolute favorite book of all time
- By Eme on 07-16-15
By: Naomi Jackson
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Diamond Head
- A Novel
- By: Cecily Wong
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Told through the eyes of the Leongs' secret-keeping daughters and wives and spanning the Boxer Rebellion to Pearl Harbor to 1960s Hawaii, Diamond Head is a breathtakingly powerful tale of tragic love, shocking lies, poignant compromise, aching loss, heroic acts of sacrifice, and miraculous hope.
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.
- By Gina on 09-06-15
By: Cecily Wong
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The Muse
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- By: Jessie Burton
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England, 1967. Odelle Bastien is a Caribbean émigré trying to make her way in London. When she starts working at the prestigious Skelton Institute of Art, she discovers a painting rumored to be the work of Isaac Robles, a young artist of immense talent and vision whose mysterious death has confounded the art world for decades. The excitement over the painting is matched by the intrigue around the conflicting stories of its discovery.
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Mixed narration
- By Amy Fleury on 08-05-16
By: Jessie Burton
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One Amazing Thing
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Winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry and an American Book Award for her short stories, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores themes of women, immigration, and her vibrant Indian culture to great effect. Divakaruni expands on these ideas in One Amazing Thing, a project long in the making and full of electric prose.
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An ok way to kill some time
- By R.Reader on 11-07-12
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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
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Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
By: Bianca Marais
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Tar Baby
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Desiree Coleman
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- Unabridged
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Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.
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So good that I'm writing my first Audible review!
- By BL on 12-10-11
By: Toni Morrison
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Funerals for Horses
- By: Catherine Ryan Hyde
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Ella Ginsberg's brother, Simon, has disappeared. His clothing, shoes, and watch were found abandoned near a freight line track in Central California. His jockey shorts and wallet were never found. The police have no clue, and Simon's wife had no warning that anything was wrong. Ella takes off on foot across much of California and Arizona, thinking she can find Simon using nothing but her knowledge of the way he might think. Her search leads her to the Navajo Nation in Arizona.
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Funerals for Horses
- By Carolyn Ferrell on 03-26-18
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Russian Winter
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In Russian Winter, the beautiful debut novel by critically acclaimed writer Daphne Kalotay, a famed ballerina’s jewelry auction in Boston reveals long-held secrets of love and family, friendship and rivalry, harkening back to Stalinist Russia. Called “tender, passionate, and moving” by Jenna Blum, the New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us, Russian Winter is a perfect choice for fans of the novels of Debra Dean (The Madonnas of Leningrad), Ann Patchett (Bel Canto), and Ian McEwan (Atonement).
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Read this review; Sophisticated and wonderful!
- By Cookie on 01-15-12
By: Daphne Kalotay
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What listeners say about Bel Canto
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Chris
- 02-11-05
Simply the best
This is the best audiobook I've ever listened to. I was spellbound by it. Anna Fields doesn't just narrate the story she becomes a dozen different people - most of them men! This is the kind of book that makes you wish for a traffic jam so you can listen longer. Of course, Patchett's story itself is compelling. The building of relationships between the hostages and the terrorists is perfectly built. By the end you've become a victim of Stockholm Syndrome yourself. I've recommended this book to just about everyone I know.
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37 people found this helpful
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Overall
- E
- 06-22-08
Bel canto
Excellent, gripping story. I couldn't wait to get in the car for my commute so I could listen to this book.
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3 people found this helpful
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- S
- 12-19-12
Slow start and never quite picks up the pace
Any additional comments?
I know I'm in the minority on the minority on this one, but this book just didn't wow me. I have read the reviews for years now and was always mildly interested, but the editors description never quite grabbed me. Unfortunately, the actual story didn't either.
The book is about a group of people who gathered together for a birthday party and to see a famous opera singer perform. The party, however, becomes a hostage situation, as soldiers break in and take all of the guests hostage. (small spoiler alert here) Everyone suffers from stockholm syndrome and befriends their captors, come to love them for different reasons and in the end try to protect them....blah blah blah....
All this happens and yet it felt like nothing really happened, because it was so slow going. In addition, you have to believe that the magic and beauty of opera really changed, or at least affected, the hearts and minds of almost everyone in the room. And that everyone involved had the capacity to see beauty everywhere because of it. Not believable, if you ask me.
Maybe my expectations were too high after reading so many excellent reviews. Anna Field, however, was a great narrator. She's excellent with accents and different male/female voices. She is always a joy to listen to.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Hartman
- 09-08-05
Beautiful--Engaging
This book is mesmerizing. When a read a few of the reviews regarding the depressing nature of the story, I was completely surprised. I found it moving and optimistic?a celebration of the human spirit at its core. Although I found the reader a little flat in the beginning, I quickly forgot about it as I got lost in Pachett?s prose. A must listen.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Peggie
- 07-15-07
Excellent Choice
Rich in descriptive writing. Just listening to the artistry in words is wonderful and sets the imagination running. Good reader and intonations. Wonderful development of characters. The plot itself is really rather fanciful and perhaps fraught with problems in reality, but the author's mastery of words and character development causes the listener to simply forget and go with the flow. All is forgiven because the listener simply is drawn into the story with the beauty of words and the richnest of the environment the author displays.
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2 people found this helpful
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- David
- 02-25-13
nah, not for me
What did you like best about Bel Canto? What did you like least?
I really didn't like the narrators voice, too feminine. Might be a good story, but I couldn't get past her reading. I couldn't pay attention enough to get it.
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- Polly
- 09-20-13
Encore - encore!
My experience with this book mirrors many of the other reviews I read. It is not particularly interesting at the beginning. The author gives you what seems to be MANY too many details about the individual characters, and yet very little action. I kept waiting for something to happen.
But the characters and their relationships ARE the story. The unfolding of friendships, the dramatic reversals in roles, the blossoming of unexpected love, and the creation of a real community ... that is what eventually grabs your attention.
I have to also say that the narrator did a fabulous job with an enormous number of accents.
Well worth it.
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Overall
- Paul
- 12-20-04
Excellent commuter companion
This story was completely engaging and beautifully read.
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- Anonymous User
- 11-23-17
Comes together very well!
Ann Patchett brings the end of this book together so well!! Really interesting rye way the structure mirrors the story.
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- Terence
- 07-30-12
Recommend
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Interesting story and well narrated. Amongst the top books I've listed to this past year.
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