Talk:Bel Canto (novel)

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Bel Canto (novel) was a good article nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There are suggestions below for improving the article. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. Reviewed version: July 11, 2007

	Literature Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to narrative novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit one of the articles mentioned below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale.
Assessment comments This article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article and what work it will need.

[edit] GA fail

While this article is a good start, it is not yet of GA quality. I am failing it for the following reasons:

Lead:

• The lead needs to be a standalone summary of the article per WP:LEAD. Also, the first paragraph should give the reader a better sense of what the book is about or what its importance is. The details about its publication and awards are a bit irrelevant at that point. Also, do not rely on the link to the "Lima Crisis" to explain the historical context for the novel - readers will more than likely not know what it is and not necessarily click. Give a few phrases for context. For an example of a novel page lead, see Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman.

Infobox:

• One of the problems with infoboxes is that some of their fields are subjective. Why are you calling the novel a "thriller"? I wouldn't classify it that way, but perhaps the critics do?

Sections to delete or integrate:

• I would delete the "Characters" section - any important information there should be contained in the "Plot summary" or integrated into a discussion of the "Themes".
• I would also eliminate the "Setting" section (wikipedia articles are not book reports). Again, any crucial information can be integrated into the "Plot summary".

Sources:

• SparkNotes is not a reliable source. It is a commercial product published to help students cheat. That is not what wikipedia articles are supposed to be based on. See WP:RS.
• The "Community" theme is sourced only to the novel itself - that is original research. Because this novel is relatively new, I don't know if literary scholars have written on it yet, but you need to check. If they haven't, you can use reviews of the novel to flesh out the "Themes" section. See here for an explanation of how to research a novel article.

Comprehensiveness:

• It would be nice to have a section on the style of the novel. You briefly allude to this when you discuss "first-person narration" but more on this topic is necessary, since this is a work of literature. Again, critics' reviews and literary scholars would talk about this topic.
• A "Reception" section is a necessity for this book. How was it received by critics? How well did it sell?
• You might even consider a separate section on the "Lima Crisis".

If you have any questions about this review, please drop me a line at my talk page. Awadewit | talk 04:04, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spoiler Tag in Plot

I removed the spoiler tag in the article, because, according to WP:NCD disclaimers should not be used in articles that contain the plot of a book. Z1720 (talk) 05:27, 1 June 2008 (UTC)