This is an impressive book. Somehow, Ann Patchett manages to create vivid characters with plausible relationships in the most limited of settings.

The novel begins dramatically with terrorists swarming an international gathering, looking for the president of the small Latin American country. But it turns out he stayed home from the party to watch his favourite soap opera and, with no plan B, the terrorists let all but one of the women leave and keep the rest of the group hostage while they figure out what to do. The exception is the famous opera singer Roxane Cox, who proves to be a valuable bargaining tool.

The operatic theme is clever, tying Roxane’s morning singing routine into the relationships that form within the captive group. Convincingly, we lose track of time after a while and the characters quickly lose any desire to escape, accepting the house they originally entered for a birthday party as their new home.

It would be tempting with such a confined setting (both time and space are restricted here) to go into long detailed descriptions of the characters’ lives, as a way to broaden the scope and escape the four walls. But this is never indulged and we begin to care about the characters knowing little about them other than their thoughts and feelings in the immediate situation. Patchett has an amazing skill in using perspective, whereby she effortlessly shifts from one character to another at times within the same paragraph, as if gliding freely among their thoughts.

As in opera so too does this novel end tragically. However, like the captors we have become so swept up in the new life they have created, the inevitable ending comes as quite a shock.

The other thing I particularly loved about this book was the importance of the polyglot, Gen. As this is an international gathering, he becomes invaluable translating firstly the demands of the terrorists, but increasingly as a tool for characters to confess their feelings for each other; declaring love from Russian into English and Japanese to Spanish. But he’s not always required and as Roxane knows, language is not the only way to express oneself.

The tone and voice of this book are particularly compelling. Written as an extended letter from a dying father to his son, the meditative style draws the reader in to glimpses of everyday family interactions and the deep and complicated history of the characters’ lives.

Reverend John Ames, narrating from his home in Gilead, links the generations of Ames men through descriptions of their shared vocation and differing understandings of theology. There are certain things he wants his son to know and remember, but also stories that evolve and ramble in a convincingly reminiscent way, all the while with a hint of mystery unfolding.

I loved the father and son relationships in this book and how complicated they became. John Ames Boughton (Jack) is the son of Ames’ best friend, but named as if his own son. His arrival back in town brings out a conflict in Ames, who feels responsible for yet greatly wary of the younger man. He’s clearly hiding something and Ames senses he should be warning his own family of him before he passes on.

The young child to whom the letter is addressed appears in snippets of daily childhood life, playing with his friend Tobias while his father speculates and longs to know about the man he will grow into.

Ideas of faith in this book run deep but somehow gently, as Ames grounds his thoughts in reality and ponders very human questions of life, death and love:

…nothing had prepared me to find myself thinking day and night about a complete stranger, a woman much too young, probably a married woman – that was the first time in my life I ever felt I could be snatched out of my character, my calling, my reputation, as if they could just fall away like a dry husk. I had never felt before that everything I thought I was amounted to the clothes on my back and the books on my shelves and the calendar I kept full of obligations waiting and obligations fulfilled. As I have said, it was a foretaste of death, at least of dying. And why should that seem strange? ‘Passion’ is the word we use, after all.