BEL CANTO BOOK CLUB
NEW!
We love this gorgeous book! Join us this September in reading Ann Patchett’s award winning Bel Canto, and then gather with us for a cozy book discussion and performance of Elena Ruehr’s String Quartet No. 5, Bel Canto, inspired by the book.
When: Thursday, September 26 at 7pm
Where: King’s Books, 218 St Helens Ave, Tacoma, WA 98402
Please join the book club by filling out and submitting the form below so that we can be in touch via email.
King’s Books offers a 15% discount on Bel Canto—open 11am-7pm daily. The book is also widely available online and in libraries.
The event on September 26 is offered FREE with support from Tacoma Creates and in partnership with King’s Books.
Donations are very welcome, thank you!
About ann patchett’s bel canto
Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award • Winner of the Orange Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • New York Times Readers’ Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century
"Bel Canto is its own universe. A marvel of a book." —Washington Post Book World
Ann Patchett’s spellbinding novel about love and opera, and the unifying ways people learn to communicate across cultural barriers in times of crisis.
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening—until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
Patchett'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.
about elena ruehr’s bel canto
A string quartet in ten movements based on the novel by Ann Patchett (Bel Canto), commissioned by and dedicated to the Cypress String Quartet. This piece takes one through the novel, develops its characters, and includes nods to Puccini, Dvorák, Schubert, Peruvian dance music, and Japanese folk song.
With works described as “sumptuously scored and full of soaring melodies” (The New York Times), and “unspeakably gorgeous” (Gramophone), American composer Elena Ruehr is known for her bold lyricism, which is informed by her ability to combine diverse musical structures spanning the second Viennese School to minimalism. Currently composer in residence with Lincoln’s Symphony Orchestra, she has been a Guggenheim Fellow (2014) and a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute (2008) and composer-in-residence with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, which recorded her opera Toussaint Before the Spirits (BMOP Sound) and her complete orchestral works (BMOP Sound, O’Keeffe Images). She has written five operas, twelve string quartets, and numerous other chamber, film and dance works that have been recorded on over twelve CDs and performed internationally.
