One Book - One Lincoln - 2003Awards & Quotes
Awards & Quotes
Back to the main One Book - One Lincoln - 2003 page
- The PEN/Faulkner Award Winner
- The Orange Award Winner
- The IMPAC/Dublin Award Nominee
- The National Book Critics Circle Nominee
The PEN/Faulkner Award
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation presents an annual award for "the best work of fiction by an American author." Learn more about the PEN/Faulkner Award, and how Bel Canto was selected at the following links:
- The PEN/Faulkner Award Site
- About the PEN/Faulkner Award
- A Cumulative list of winners of the PEN/Faulkner Award
- BBC News announcement of Bel Canto's selection as PEN/Faulkner Winner
- The Folger Shakespeare Library announcement of Bel Canto's win
- The Foundation Center announcement of Bel Canto's win
- The Poets & Writers Magazine announcement of Bel Canto's win
- The Southern Register announcement of Bel Canto's win
The Orange Prize
Since 1995, the Orange Prize for Fiction has been awarded to outstanding fiction by women authors. Bel Canto won the Orange Prize in 2002. See information about the background of the Orange Prize, and the news about Bel Canto's win at the following sites:
- The main site for The Orange Prize
- Orange Prize site announcement of Bel Canto's win Jun 11 2002
- Orange Prize site - page dedicated to Ann Patchett
- Ananova news site announcement of Bel Canto's win
- BBC News announcement of Bel Canto's win
- The Guardian's announcement of Bel Canto's win
- The Independent's announcement of Bel Canto's win
- Lindsay and Howes Booksellers' announcement of Bel Canto's win
- The Telegraph's announcement of Bel Canto's win
The IMPAC/Dublin Award
Since 1996, candidates for the IMPAC Dublic Literary Award are nominated by libraries from major cities around the world, then are voted upon by a distinguished panel of judges. Bel Canto was a shortlist finalist in 2003. Learn more about the IMPAC Dublin Award at these sites:The National Book Critics Circle Award
A group of 700 professional critics nominate and vote for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction each year. Bel Canto was a finalist for the 2001 award. Find out more about the NBCC award at the following sites:
- National Book Critics Circle homepage
- List of past winners & nominees
- Library Journal article on 2001 shortlist nominees
- List of 1995-2001 winners & nominees
Critical Quotes From Print Reviews of Bel Canto
- "Combining an unerring instinct for telling detail with the broader brushstrokes you need to tackle issues of culture and politics, Patchett creates a remarkably compelling chronicle of a multinational group of the rich and powerful held hostage for months." "The most minor character breathes with life. Each page is dense with incident, the smallest details magnified by the drama of the situation and by the intensity confinement always creates." "Brilliant."
-- Kirkus Reviews, April 15 2001
- "As her readers now eagerly anticipate, Patchett can be counted on to deliver novels rich in imaginative bravado and psychological nuance." "Patchett proves equal to her themes; the characters' relationships mirror the passion and pain of grand opera, and readers are swept up in a crescendo of emotion fervor."
-- Publishers Weekly, Apr 16 2001
- "Readers curious about the emotional flow between hostages and their takers should cotton to this novel based on the 1996 Tupac Amaru takeover of the Japanese ambassadorial residence in Lima, Peru." "Unhurriedly, even languorously, Patchett brings readers into the minds of the characters."
-- Booklist, Gilbert Taylor, Jun 1 2001
- "Ostensibly the story of a months-long hostage crisis, Bel Canto is more a meditation on the unlikely allegiances that form in extreme circumstances." "One approaches the final pages with a heavy heart for several reasons, not the least of which being that this fine read has come to an end."
-- Entertainment Weekly, Karen Valby, Jun 8 2001
- "[Patchett's] previous novels have demonstrated her precise eye for the shadings of human interaction played out on small stages." "Bel Canto often shows Patchett doing what she does best - offering fine insights into the various ways in which human connections can be forged, whatever pressures the world may place upon them."
-- The New York Times Book Review, James Polk, Jun 10 2001
- "Patchett's tragicomic novel - a fantasia of guns and Puccini and Red Cross negotiations - invokes the glorious, unreliable promises of art, politics, and love. Against this grand backdrop, the smallest gestures bloom with meaning…"
-- The New Yorker, Jun 18 2001
- "[Bel Canto] is essentially a novel about the power of music; also about the power of love, which is not quite the same thing, although related." "A few plot twists may seem far-fetched, but those who remember the strange, true tale of Patricia Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army will hesitate to say that such things cannot happen in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of hostage-holding."
-- Book World, Joseph McLellan, Jul 8 2001
- "[The] development of the characters, the way in which each deals with the situation, is charmingly, often humorous portrayed in a narrative that moves effortlessly between the protagonists." "Bel Canto explores how quickly we adapt to new surroundings and make them our own, our capacity for change, how each of us may have depths and strengths that remain untapped except in times of crisis. The novel plays with the characters' perceptions of reality - yet it is both deliberately surreal and at the same time dependent upon a real-life event…"
-- Times Literary Supplement, Margaret Stead, Jul 27 2001
- "Bel Canto is its own universe; it is a marvel of a book. It delineates the way we manage to sustain hope and all the things we must forget in order to experience joy and reasonably pursue the very human desire to be happy. […] It is one of those books that makes me envy anyone who has yet to read it."
-- Book World, Robb Forman Dew, Dec 2 2001