I'm in the minority of people who didn't like Bel Canto; I found the writing style so self-consciously...written...that the book just felt too constructed and detached and not at all alive or emotional. So I should probably have known that I would not like this book either. Same writer, same writing style.

The descriptions are lush, the characters are very rich, and the writing is technically lovely, but the style and the tone are for me so distant that I just did not care at all about any of the characters or what happened to them. I cannot connect with this woman's writing style. Anne Patchett and I are done.