Ann Patchett

Bel Canto (HarperCollins)

Appearing 6 p.m. June 8 at Davis-Kidd Booksellers

Nashville-based novelist Ann Patchett doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of an author—no black turtleneck or wire-framed glasses, no major personality dysfunctions, no substance-abuse problems. She didn’t even starve for that long before she got published. In short, she belies all those myths about how one must suffer for one’s art. Instead, she’s thoughtful, engaged, and hungry for new experiences—all traits reflected in her writing.

Her newest book, Bel Canto (HarperCollins), hits bookstore shelves this week. The novel is the fourth from Patchett, who published her first book, The Patron Saint of Liars, in 1992. Patron Saint was a New York Times Notable Book selection and was followed by two other impressive works: Taft (1994) and The Magician’s Assistant (1997).

Born in Los Angeles, Patchett moved to Nashville when she was 6 and has been based here ever since. After graduating from Nashville’s St. Bernard Academy, she attended Sarah Lawrence College in New York State, where she had the honor of studying fiction under some heavyweight writers. “I had three really amazing teachers—four actually,” she says. “My first year, I studied poetry under Jane Cooper, and that was incredible. Then I had Allan Gurganus, Russell Banks, and Grace Paley. It was the dream team of fiction writers.” Although she’d been writing since she was a child, a short story that she wrote for Gurganus ended up being her first published work, landing in The Paris Review in 1984.

For all her training as a writer, Patchett eschews the oft-repeated axiom of “write what you know.” “I actually don’t believe in [that],” she says. “I believe in writing about what interests you. What I know never interests me very much. I always think of writing as an opportunity to learn, and so I like to pick things that I don’t know anything about and then take that opportunity to do research and expand my world a little bit.”

That helps explain why Patchett’s four novels to date are a diverse collection of settings, plots, characters, and points of view. Her main characters have included a young pregnant woman, an African American bar owner from Memphis, and the wife of a deceased magician in Los Angeles. Bel Canto centers around Roxane, an opera singer who has traveled to an unnamed South American country to perform for a Japanese businessman. At the home of the nation’s president, the performance is interrupted when terrorists raid the gathering. The novel is loosely based on the 1996 takeover of the Japanese embassy in Lima.

“It doesn’t really take place in Lima,” the author explains. “It takes place in a living room. It could be a living room anywhere; it’s a completely international group of characters. I wanted it to be open enough that you could imagine that it was anywhere.”

An exacting researcher, Patchett took a trip to Peru in preparation for writing the book. “I was talking about it for a long time. I don’t speak Spanish, and I don’t know much about South America. I kept talking about it, and my long-term companion finally said, ‘This is it. We’re going,’ and really pushed me into it.”

Patchett also had to school herself in opera as well. “It was something I had to totally research,” she says. “I knew nothing about opera, and now I’m a complete opera devotee.” Not surprisingly, she disagrees with a common perception about the art form, famously espoused by Richard Gere’s character in Pretty Woman: People either love opera or they hate it, and if they hate it, they can never learn to love it. That’s bunk, according to Patchett, who argues that “opera is like baseball. If you don’t know what’s going on, it is not interesting. You can watch opera all day long and not be moved by it, and in fact be tortured by it, if you don’t know how to keep score, so to speak.

“The thing that really got me on the right track was a book called Opera 101 by Fred Plotkin. It was like taking a college course. So I knew the history of the opera...and I sat down and paid attention and I really listened. I mean, opera is not the Eagles,” she says, laughing. “It’s not something you can put on in the background.”

It is a testament to Patchett’s deep engagement with her subject matter that she is one of few contemporary authors able to weave an intricate plot, create well-rounded characters, and do so in a highly literate voice. Her novels often have mystery and intrigue, but they are not mysteries—not in the formulaic sense. Journalist and author Veronica Chambers describes her work this way: “We read Patchett’s novels with the same pleasure and awe of an audience watching a chained Houdini escape from an underwater chamber.” Patchett is also adept at sprinkling in the occasional line of comic relief, adding yet another dimension to her otherwise serious writing.

Like many authors, Patchett has explored the possibilities of reaching an even larger audience through films and television. Patron Saint of Liars was produced as a made-for-television movie, which, she says, “was a real non-event.” And Morgan Freeman’s production company has optioned the rights for Taft. The actor will be playing the title character, and Winona Ryder has been cast as the female lead—although Patchett, who also wrote the screenplay, is doubtful the film will ever make it to theaters. “They planned to do this six years ago, and [both actors] were a little old to do it then. They’re quite too old to do it now,” she says. “When I wrote the script, I talked to Morgan Freeman and said I wanted to bump everybody’s age up, because I would rather write a script that takes into account that these characters are older than have Winona Ryder playing 16 and Freeman playing 35.”

Whatever her attempts to branch out, Patchett remains focused foremost on writing. She counts John Updike, Philip Roth, Leo Tolstoy, and Saul Bellow among her influences, and credits her parents for introducing her at a young age to such great writers. “My father is one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He was a police officer in Los Angeles for 35 years. He worked on the Manson case, and was the guy who picked up Sirhan Sirhan after he shot Bobby Kennedy. He had an amazing career and was a part of history.” Patchett’s mother, Jeanne Ray, is also a novelist and also lives in Nashville. Her first book, Julie and Romeo, came out last year and will be out in paperback in June. “When she wrote her first book,” Patchett says, “she started to write it when she was 60. It’s a great story. And the book went through the roof; it did very well. Barbra Streisand is supposed to be making the movie. Of course, you never know, but it looks good.”

Patchett admits that strong familial bonds are uncommon in her profession—most parents don’t ever think of encouraging their children to follow the lonely and rarely rewarding pursuit of writing novels. But “my parents are amazing,” she says, “They got divorced when I was young, and they are now both married to incredible people. I’m very close to my parents, and they’ve been very supportive of me. I guess that’s one of the things that sets me apart from so many people that I meet. I had parents that, when I said I wanted to be a writer, they said ‘Fantastic.’ And most parents just don’t say that.”