Bel Canto, Chapter One

There so taken by the beauty of her voice that they wanted to cover her mouth with their mouth, drink in. Maybe music could be transferred, devoured, owned. What would it mean to kiss the lips that had held such a sound?

Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

The book whose first sentence is my favorite: "When the lights went out, the accompanist kissed her." The author whose friendship with Lucy Grealy struck me in her memoir Truth and Beauty. 

I had wanted to read this book for a long time. I had kept it guardedly on my bookshelf as a reminder, like a reservation for a dinner table. And all this time I had saved it, but for what? I had gifted it to Katerina a couple years ago, by the first paragraph I had judged it a good book--she would like it, it's about music and love and why, it's the winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award. Katerina is a musician, Russian, neuroscience major--she wrote back and told me she loved it. And I am loving it. 

The chapters are long, about thirty pages each, containing voices, many spoken, one sung. Nevertheless I can hear them, not only in English but in Japanese and French and Spanish and Russian and Italian--and in music. On Gen's voice Patchett writes: "It was not a musical voice, and yet it affected him [Mr. Hosokawa] like music." Perhaps the translator's music-like voice comes from his linguistic ability--a different language like a different key.

English must be in E major. Sing with me.