In an unknown South American country resembling Peru, a Vice
President hosts an elaborate birthday party for a Japanese business magnate.
The President stays home so as not to miss his soap opera, which adds an
abiding question concerning the levels of political intrigue, since a trio of
military generals stages a coup d’etat by taking all the elite persons at the
birthday party hostage in the great house.
Sequestered there the group, consisting of the powerful elite and the
armed rebels, is lulled over a period of several weeks into a rather relaxed
state in which certain main characters fall in love and others abide or easily
tolerate one another. How ever does this
happen? Our weathy Japanese business
man, who had no intention of building a factory in the godforsaken South
American nation in the first place, had been lured to his birthday party by the
presence of his favorite opera singer, so ardent was his love for this woman’s
voice and interpretative genius, so fervent his love of opera, that which, in
the end, he lived for after the long hours his work were daily done.
We spent the hours of the book in the house with the rebels
and captives, a place that becomes somehow magical, a magic brought on by the
universality of love and music that lifts people out of their conflict zones
and mends societal fissures brought on by the tyranny of the wealthy over the
poor and the inevitable suffering it causes.
Patchett brings both sides, oppressors and oppressed together in a
rebellion of the latter against the former, in a social experiment of her own creation.
She saturates her characters
with the language of love and they prove worthy. What would happen to people previously
pitted against each other if societal inequalities and unjust constructs were removed,
if living became immediate, if all that mattered were daily bread and music,
nourishment for the body and for the soul, and the best of both were had in
abundance? This book is as much about
the natural capacity for people of different languages, cultures, and classes
to live together in peace if societal systems built for power and control
over resources were removed, and the healing power of art were
allowed to fill the void, as it is about the individual lives of Patchett's fascinating characters.
Unfortunately, and as Patchett knew, their story
must end tragically, because a beautiful world suspended as it were in time and
place cannot last forever except in imagination.
The hostages, who ironically have found more freedom held captive to the
power of love and the beauty of art, than the world of men outside who are captive
in a society built on baser instincts—the hostages will be
“freed” though not all will emerge alive.
The Japanese magnate, who lived at the pinnacle of power due to his authority over
accumulated wealth, will respond in a heartbeat to save the
life of another whose life may not formerly have been considered to have much
value, and in doing this he is redeemed, as if he had all along been a magnificent man who in a moment of truth proved this.
It is a brilliant enduring novel to continue to
ponder, to write and talk about.
