The News from Paraguay

by Lily Tuck

Book Overview

"Brimming with rich descriptions of a beautiful country....The News From Paraguay evolves from a quirky, elegant tale of an unconventional love affair into a sweeping epic." -- Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Lily Tuck's impressive novel offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of 19th century Paraguay, a largely untouched wilderness where European and American figures mix with the Spanish aristocracy of the capital and the indigenous...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060934867
• ISBN13: 9780060934866
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Daring Writer

The first third of this book is tedious. There is no real device that drives opening of the novel forward. The romance between Franco Solano and Ella Lynch is predictable--it is after all, history. The narrator makes no attempt to build tension. Ella and Franco's trip to Paraguay is only mildly interesting. Ella's first impressions of Paraguay fall far short of the full exotic potential. The characters don't really want anything. There is no real tension between characters or between character and landscape. Tension is mentioned on occasions, but the tension (such as that which exists between Ella and Franco's fat sisters, or between Franco and his brothers) takes place off-stage. We never really see it and therefore it does not really matter. The book is told through a series of anecdotes from a variety of perspectives. In the opening of the book, the characters are circumstantially connected. So what we get is a bunch of circumstantially connected anecdotes in relatively tensionless environments where the exoticism of landscape and people is never really explored. People are simply going about their lives in a far-off, sleepy place. But thankfully it gets better. And really, the novel would not work if the beginning were any different. If I took one thing away from this novel, it is the importance of pacing--the idea that in a novel, unlike a short story, the writer has the space to use the pace of events and the contrast of worlds to show movement. Each and every thing that each and every character possesses at the opening of the novel--from Franco's gastronomic and sexual appetite to the country of Paraguay and the city of Paris--everything is ruined. The destruction of that opening world in complete. The destruction begins at the midpoint of the novel--chapter 9. Franco has an abscessed tooth that must be removed. "Franco sat up and spat a cheesy, puslike liquid into the basin...In spite of herself, the reek made (Ella) draw away and some of the cheesy, puslike stuff fell onto Ella's silk shoe." And from there, everything falls apart. The world created is then piece by piece, person by person, bond by bond, felled. The anecdotes are also told out of sequence. Again, this deflates tension. We know that Franco dies, before we learn how he dies. We know that Ella escapes and moves back to London, before we know how she escapes. We know that little Pancho dies, before we know how he dies. And what this knowledge does is draw our focus to the way in which events transpire rather than their uncertainty. It is the way history works and a creative and ambitious way to structure a novel. It is also interesting to note that the tension of want--the desire typical of story tension, is abundant in the second half of the novel. In each small passage, each character wants something. Sometimes they want the small things that war takes away--food, comfort. Sometimes they want the destructive things that war brings--they rape, murder, pillage. Someti

Judge for Yourself

I feel compelled to submit a review for this book because of all the negative ones out there. I found the episodic style odd at first but I soon found myself unable to put this book down. Yes, there are many characters, and yes, the brutality is unrelenting but the book brilliantly conveys the chaos, horror, and suffering that can be inflicted on a country (people, animals, environment, everything)through the shallow, ego-driven schemes and whims of the undeservedly powerful. This is no romantic novel with a happy ending. The main characters are not necessarily likable but they are certainly not "one-dimensional" as several reviewers claim. And although many reviewers dismissed the historical accuracy (which the author never claims), I have to say at least I know a bit more about Paraguay than I did before.

Elegant and unconventional

One has to read this novel on its own terms. Many readers seem to have let their expectations prevent them from seeing the book for what it really is: an elegant work of imagination, observing few of the conventions of the historical novel. If you are looking for a romantic tale featuring characters with whom you feel an instant affinity, don't read this book. But if you are interested in the writer's craft, you will enjoy and admire this novel, and perhaps understand why it won the National Book Award.

The mistress and the dictator

By the time she is nineteen in 1854, Ella Lynch, an Irish beauty, is divorced and living in Paris, ready for a new romance. She finds her next paramour in the unlikely person of Francisco Solano Lopez, better known as the infamous Franco, the future dictator of Paraguay. Stout, dark and hirsute, Franco is immediately attracted to the blonde-haired Ella and determined to win her affections, showering her with expensive gifts. When Franco leaves Paris to return to his native Paraguay, Ella is by his side, where she will remain for many years. Although they never marry, she bears him five sons, an extraordinary fecund consort for the dictator. Ella is a product of the Paris she so enjoyed, where she resided in elegant surroundings, spending her days at parties and royal fetes. For much of their time together, Franco is able to offer her much of the same, their days a continuous romantic adventure; never does she see him as the Emperor who has no clothes. Ella lives in a world of her own imagination, one of servants and plenty, her needs constantly attended, until Franco's war turns bad. Even then she follows him to the countryside until forced to flee for her safety. The author approaches her subject with an eye to historical possibilities, filling in the lapses with vivid imagination, recreating a place and time long lost to memory. There is no question that Franco is a greatly flawed leader, a despot who deprives his citizens of their livelihood in an effort to establish Paraguay as a military power. His hubris costs the lives of many young men; torture and starvation descend upon the survivors, while Franco skirmishes to the bitter end, his decimated troops dwindling before the advancing swords of the Brazilians. The author recreates the brilliant and exotic Paraguayan landscape, a lush background for the unfolding drama of an ill-conceived war. Tuck's Ella is a self-absorbed, spoiled woman whose beauty allows her to rise above the poverty and turmoil of ordinary life. She turns a blind eye to Franco's arrogance and destruction and never questions his ability to rule. This is a fascinating view of a couple who are defined by their physical differences, yet perhaps drawn together by their similarities. Tuck constructs a portrait of an exotic country, flourishing before it is gutted by one man's Napoleonic fantasies, his blonde, blue-eyed paramour proudly riding at his side. Luan Gaines/2004.

A powerful historical novel

Those that have studied South American history or are interested in doing so will find this novel extremely interesting, since the author collected as much historical evidence as she could and filled in the voids with clever fiction based on these facts. Lily Tuck presents an interesting character, Francisco Solano Lopez, focusing the story and developing the action around his mistress, Ella Lynch. La Ella, as she was called by the locals, had an importance and notoriety similar to the one achieved by Eva Peron in Argentina. The narration consists of a mixture of short passages from different sources: snippets of Ella's personal diary and letters, descriptions of events that took place during that time and scenes among the different characters. These bring the story nicely to life. Franco's father sent him to Europe in the year 1854 as an ambassador, and in France he met and was mesmerized by Ella. She was nineteen years old and already a widow, but had so much life and desire to live in her that could charm any man and surmount any obstacle. Her personal diary shows this vitality, and when the years go by, we witness the slow withering of her passion and feistiness. From the start, we also see Franco's feistiness, which differs with Ella's in one very important aspect: while hers was positive and good-natured, his was capricious and envious. Francisco Solano Lopez seduced Ella and took her with him to Paraguay. At this point is the only time in the story in which we can observe a positive desire in Franco, since he wanted to make Paraguay a better place. However, the real Franco surfaced fast enough, when during the trip home his temper showed up uninvited and the poor servants and underlings suffered the consequences. Upon his arrival in Paraguay, Franco started experiencing an urge for power that was fulfilled in part by the death of his father and his appointment as new dictator. Nevertheless, this did not quench his thirst as he wanted to emulate Napoleon's imperialism. This desire to dominate larger empires led him to confrontations with other countries, which ended with one of the biggest wars in the history of Paraguay, what was called as the war of the Triple Alianza. Although this war was not entirely Francisco Solano Lopez's fault as the narration leads us to believe, his arrogant and pushy behavior gave the other three countries, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay and excuse to exterminate most of the Paraguayan population. I wish I had had books in my childhood narrating history the way this one does. The characters come to life and their motivations are easy to understand, making all the historical facts that result from their actions completely logical too. Even though I was born in Uruguay and lived there a good part of my life, I found stories here that helped me understand situations that I did not fully comprehend before. With the exception of the reasons behind the war of the Triple Alianza, this is a highly recommended read.