I'm on a reread kick this year; it's been interesting to see how my taste changes over time. I first read this in 2008 and I gave it four stars then, though I remembered next to nothing about it except that it left a fairly significant emotional impression; nearly 15 years later it's still a four-star read. Emotionally, this remains a huge banger for me. I love stories about love formed out of desperation, which we know from the outset could not possibly survive outside of the context the characters find themselves in. I love, still so deeply love, Atonement for the same reason.

But man had I forgotten this book is based on a real political event. It was weird while reading knowing this ?romance about terrorism? came out in 2001, and it was weird that it was fundamentally a romance about the development of complex Stockholm syndrome that I nevertheless enjoyed so much. And then it was super weird to be reminded on goodreads dot com that this is based on a real situation that transpired in Peru in 1996. The country is never named in the book, the setting transformed troublingly into a nameless fictional desolate Spanish-speaking nation. It seems the author did not want to cast aspersions on any particular nation or its citizens, but boy... even without realizing this was a real event sanitized to hell, I was aware of the colonialism-created political dynamics that none of the characters seem particularly burdened by.

Even so, I loved the book's themes. You know when you're stuck in a hopeless situation and are forced to ruminate on the beauty in your midst??? Never not gonna get me. It's about art and love and human survival. Loved the epilogue, it's kinda horrible, no notes.

One thing I spend a lot of time thinking about lately is being responsible about what we write, and the setting in which we write it. Representation matters, as does being aware that the angle from which someone is looking at a piece can fundamentally change its shape. I have been reading some thinkpieces about Regency-era "colourblind" reimaginings like Bridgerton being not fantastical but rather erasing the realities of colonialism without meaningfully imagining an alternate history. I agree. Bridgerton is politically unsatisfying because it's not internally consistent. It doesn't have its own history, but rather has taken our history and simply washed a couple of facets out with soap. The world is visibly different without being substantively different. Events cannot logically follow from each other when you change only a handful of aspects of history, because there is no cause and effect the way there is in our world and well-imagined fictional worlds. Cogent history and politics demand a degree of procedural logic; not all fantastical premises do.

I don't think imagining an idealized history is mutually exclusive with fantasy; something can be, and often is, both fantasy and erasure. Some people may actively define escapism as our world except with the bad parts shaved off. This book is another prime example of white washing, in every pejorative sense of the word: it took a real premise, sanitized it to hell, and used the scaffolding to tell a story about people making meaning in desperate circumstances. They could have been any desperate circumstances, but for whatever reason these were the ones chosen. It's about the vibes. Bridgerton wants Regency vibes without too closely considering how the wealth of Regency-era landed gentry in England was produced, and Bel Canto took the 1996 Japanese embassy hostage crisis out of this dimension and painted over it so actors could play parts on its little stage.

But I enjoyed Bridgerton, and god forgive me I enjoyed this book. Reading it was informative in the way I generally hope a reread is: to help me identify my preferences in stories. What do I want to read about, what themes do I enjoy? I enjoy these themes, even though they take place on a theatre set. The thing is that we are absolutely free not to put themes like "love in a time of hostage" into settings like 1996 Peru. We can also have a show that looks and feels like Bridgerton without it taking place in Regency England. It feels like fiction should be held to a higher standard of imagination and worldbuilding than to put a little soap on history and be content with the theatre production that follows; but that also demands more work on the part of creators, and perhaps on the part of readers, who no longer have a shorthand ready in their minds when the existing world is scrapped in favour of wholesale building something new. Much understanding can be abbreviated and shorthanded by a text when we pour a little soap on history. In theory, it gives both readers and writers more time and space to enjoy the enjoyable themes we like to read and write about; but in cases like these, the reader's position makes the difference as to whether or not this was mostly fun or wildly insensitive. My ignorance of the totality of this book's history soap allowed me to enjoy the character-driven drama of it all, exactly the way I theoretically hate horrible Anthony Bridgerton but in fact he is my little meow meow and I'm glad he gave head on screen. All very complex, isn't it? Just my little thinkies. 4 stars.