Where It All Goes Down
Vice President's House in an Unnamed South American Country; Contemporary (But Written Before September 11, 2001)
Everything except the Epilogue takes place in one house and garden in an unnamed country in South America. Sounds like simplest setting ever. But like lots of things in Bel Canto, the setting isn't as simple as it looks. What makes it complicated?
First, there's the way that Patchett treats this single house as the setting for a vast range of human exploration, from finding an unexpected friendship to discovering a new art form to falling in love. She even makes the guests at the party international, so in a lot of ways much of the world is gathered in the house. It's like summer camp meets study abroad meets being magically spirited away to another world. Which is yet another signal of Patchett's focus on fairy tales (see "Why Should I Care?" for more), a type of story where very unexpected things lead to new experiences of exploration.
Is This Real Life?
If Patchett is writing fairy tales, that raises another question. Is the setting a real place or not? It's hard to say. We're never told which country we're in, and everything takes place inside one large house, so we don't get much of a glimpse of the city and culture around the house. In a certain way, this book is about how one small house opens up and becomes almost another world, the way the stage becomes a completely different place so easily in opera or your favorite Broadway play.
On the other hand, the book does say that it unfolds somewhere in South America, and Patchett has said that she was inspired by an actual event that happened in Lima, Peru in 1997. So, not totally make-believe.
At the same time, Bel Canto doesn't seem very interested in the details of actual cultures or economies of countries in South America. It seems a lot more interested in weaving a fairy tale about how an extraordinary event in a place that might seem exotic to American readers could open up a new world to those experiencing it.
Whether this feels like a beautiful fairy tale or a bit of a cop-out depends on what you're looking for in the book.
Pre-9/11
Oh, and one more complicated little aspect. Bel Canto is clearly a contemporary novel; it's not trying to be a period piece. But the timing of its publication means it might feel like a period piece in a very particular way. Bel Canto was published in 2001, months before the September 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S.
So the novel wasn't influenced by the American and international conversation about terrorism and governmental responses to it that has taken place since then. If it's not a gritty drama wrestling with tense questions about terrorism, government responses, and social conditions, that's one reason why.