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Review title: What was she thinking?
Product review: Imagine eating a bucket of popcorn, and then discovering a dead cockroach on the bottom. That's how the "epilogue" to Bel Canto works. Patchett has spun us along, whispering "Imagine THIS happens," and because her language is vivid and the fantasies appealing, we agree over and over, knowing full well that "THIS" only happens in the imagination. Then reality dumps a hailstorm on the sandbox. Fair enough.If she had stopped there, she would have had a lyrical tale, not so much cautionary (Pretty maids all come to dust) as whimsical (Isn't it nice to think so?). If she had, as one reviewer suggested, gone with the humor that the story inevitably creates, since it runs contrary to our and the characters' expectations, she would have had a book not so different from Bel Canto. Instead she gives us an epilogue centered on event that is neither a satisfying fantasy nor likely in the real world.Give it a read, if you don't mind cockroaches.
