The News from Paraguay: A Novel [Hardcover]

Lily Tuck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 2004

Pursued by the future dictator of Paraguay, Irish courtesan Ella Lynch struggles with isolation in spite of her power as his mistress, and witnesses the nation's victimization due to her lover's arrogant ambitions.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beautiful Ella Lynch left her native Ireland at 10 and married a French officer at 15; by 19, she is divorced, living with a Russian count and struggling to pay her embittered maid. Thus she's in prime shape to appreciate the quick and ardent attentions of Francisco Solano Lopez, aka Franco, the future dictator of Paraguay, when he spies her on horseback in a Paris park in 1854. Rich, generous and not unhandsome, he makes an appealing lover, and soon Ella is off with him to Paraguay, which he vows to make "a country exactly like France." The story unfolds through Tuck's elegant narration (she flits from one character's point-of-view to another in short segments) and Ella's impassioned diaries. The author's research is impressive (Ella was a real 19th-century courtesan) but never overbearing as she explores the life of a spoiled kept woman in a foreign land, as well as the lives, both high and low, of those around her. Established as Franco's mistress in Asunción, Ella bears Franco many sons, while Franco succeeds his father as ruler and acquires mistress after mistress. Tuck (Siam; Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived) weaves in the stories of Franco's fat, jealous sisters; a disgraced Philadelphia doctor; Ella's wet nurses; and a righteous U.S. minister, among many others, in a richly layered evocation of a complicated world. When Paraguay finds itself at odds with neighboring countries, the novel chronicles the various tragedies and defeats with a cool and unswerving eye. Tuck's novel may not be for the faint of heart, but it is a rich and rewarding read.
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From The New Yorker

Tuck's historical novel of nineteenth-century Paraguay is told largely through (and sometimes in the voice of) Ella Lynch, a blond, fair-skinned Irishwoman who, while a courtesan in Paris, met Francisco Solano Lopez, the son of Paraguay's dictator. She became his mistress and, after Lopez (known as Franco) succeeded his father, she was the most powerful woman in the country. As an Irishwoman in Paraguay, Tuck's Ella is an outsider. But so, in a way, is Franco, a megalomaniac who builds a theatre modelled on La Scala and wages a disastrous war against Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. Paraguay's malarial swamps and faux-European high society are the perfect setting for Tuck's dark wit, and her novel is quickened by such details as Ella's pink marble palace and her son's "necklace" made from the ears of enemy soldiers on a rawhide string.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1St Edition edition (May 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0066209447
• ISBN-13: 978-0066209449
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #305,440 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars How did this book get published?, January 18, 2006

By 

I. Fernandez (Santa Cruz, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The News from Paraguay: A Novel (Hardcover)

From about the second page of this book, I was shaking my head in disbelief that anyone would publish it. The characters and their relationships are so poorly developed you are left with a blur of images lacking connection to one another. Add to that the stereotypical characters (the men are all violent and lusting either for girls or boys, the women are all "large-assed" or fat with the exception of Ella). And the gratuitous sentence or two at the end of each section about various characters' sexual proclivities was so completely dumb, not to mention kind of repulsive (I like a good sex scene as much as the next person, but Tuck's descriptions are completely banal).
Oh wait, there's more. The Spanish is ATROCIOUS. It's hard to believe that Tuck had a translator for this book. It's pretty clear that whoever copy edited it neither reads nor writes nor speaks Spanish. Half the names are grammatically incorrect. Many of the words are just plain wrong ("vita" means life in Italian, not Spanish, for starters). I felt embarrased for the author. Does she know that her book is full of errors?
The one word that comes to mind when thinking about this book is: SHALLOW. I sincerely hope that readers don't mistake this book for historical fiction. The author clearly knows little about Paraguay and its people and history, and clearly doesn't care, from her superficial treatment of it.

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Wow. . . this book stunk, July 20, 2005

By 

aschie30 (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The News from Paraguay: A Novel (Paperback)

This book focuses primarily upon two real-life characters: Ella Lynch, an attractive Irish courtesan, and Franco, a Paraguayan dictactor-in-the-making. The story begans with Ella in Paris as she is dumped by her Russian count lover. Franco, also in Paris, admires her from afar as he first views her adeptly riding a horse. He then unrelentingly courts her. After seemingly one night with Franco, she packs up with him and goes to Paraguay.

In the beginning, I admit that I liked it because there was a sense of foreboding and danger as she follows Franco, who is showing signs of brutality, to Paraguay, an isolated country unfriendly to outsiders which Franco's family runs. I thought- how will this turn out? Will there be conflict between them? Will she get homesick? Will he beat her, trap her, or kill her? Will she escape back to Paris?

None of those things. In fact, the moment she steps onto Paraguayan soil, the plot stops. Ella becomes a shallow, superficial character who cares more about her fancy clothes even though she seems to recognize what a brutal tyrant her care-giver is. Franco wages wars that were never explained or fully realized, except to provide you with snippets of battles here and there. The author chooses to present Ella one-dimensionally and Franco, even more so. Thus, you never really attach yourself to either one.

In the "end" (if you can call it that), I thought, what was the point? Were you supposed to like Ella and sympathize with her? Were you supposed to think, "that's what she gets because she's so shallow?"

Overall, while the author exhibits some writing talent (i.e., she can cobble together some beautiful sentences), she cannot tell a story.

Avoid at all costs. I say that rarely disliking any book I read.

52 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What's happened to the National Book Award?, January 12, 2005

By 

K. L. Cotugno (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The News from Paraguay: A Novel (Hardcover)

I expected so much from this book and purposely did not read any other customer reviews before picking it up. This was highly disappointing. The descriptions of life in 19th century Paraguay could have been gleaned from surfing the Internet, the characters were one-dimensional. The style, episodic and random, was distracting, not original, if originality was the purpose. I so wanted to like this book since I've been puzzled by the finalists the National Book Award has chosen lately. But it did not deliver.