The News from Paraguay: A Novel

Author - Lily Tuck ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from HarperCollins was reviewed on 29-Jul-2008.

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1) Hardcover Book The News from Paraguay: A Novel by HarperCollins. This novel seems to inspire passionate reviews, mostly negative. No, I don´t think it is up to the standards of the National Book Award. And I can´t comment on the errors in Spanish that so many readers have noted, since I don´t speak Spanish. In the interests of full disclosure, I´ll also admit that I read it on a plane, where it was the alternative to some stupid movie. For what they´re worth, here are my thoughts. First, what I think many people find unsatisfying is the point of view. While we do get to know, sometimes, what Ella Lynch, the main character, is thinking, we mostly see the characters from the outside, objectively, without knowing very much about their thoughts. On the other hand, the detail is lush, conjuring up images of heat, brilliant color, dirt, opulence, decay. And the novel is essentially cinematic: it frames an incident, then moves to another. Characters appear and reappear, drifting into view like tropical fish in an enormous tank. The novel may not be entirely pleasing, but it is interesting. Perhaps Tuck wrote the novel with the screenplay in mind.¤

2) Hardcover Book The News from Paraguay: A Novel by HarperCollins. 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. Sometimes it is the reader who finds himself wanting characters to be in some small way decent. And perhaps that is the most intriguing tension of this book--the writer never gives the reader what he wants. A dangerous thing to do.

This is a daring novel worthy of praise.¤

3) Hardcover Book The News from Paraguay: A Novel by HarperCollins. Although I have not yet finished the novel and actually am finding it intriguing, the thing that bothers me is the number of errors in Spanish. There are also a couple in the Portuguese, and I cannot speak for the Guaraní language. This may seem like a minor detail, but I do speak Spanish and think others like me appreciate correct usage of the language, not just having it for decoratng the novel. When character names are misspelled, it is jarring - Juanita and Inés (spelled Juañita and Iñés) are just two examples of over-abundance of the ñ. Or there´s the name of the Palacio de Justiza. The word is Justicia, please.

Unlike a lot of readers, I have read about Paraguay, have read a lot of its literature, and do consider it well worth writing about. Thus I applaud the choice, but am a bit disconcerted by the linguistic inaccuracies - to the point where I am now curious as to the documentation used to write the novel. Chalk this up to being a literary critic by trade, but one hopes there is some legitimacy to what one is reading. Theh big appeal is the way a foreigner reaches a very foreign country and adapts - or doesn´t. It is the most intriguing part of the plot.

However, I recommend that in the future there be a capable linguistic consultant involved in any works that take place where English is not the only language used.¤

4) Hardcover Book The News from Paraguay: A Novel by HarperCollins. This National Award winning novel is surprising in that it is essentially a pot boiler with a literary lining. There is the sex, of course, the rampant excessive emotion, and the quick sketching of character based on a few, salient, and dramatic characteristics. And Tuck can´t seem to let this alone. She sketches out even the most minor characters, from stable boys to aristocrats, and strings them together to advance the plot. It´s an interesting device, sometimes used to great effect, and sometimes not. Used with greater dexterity, this novel could have been a masterpiece. As it is, it is only a good read, which in itself is an accomplishment of note. I suppose it is heartening that literary fiction, as deemed by the academy, can delve into a realm so sharply drawn with excess, so (at times) melodramatically portrayed, and so designed to merely titillate.¤

5) Hardcover Book The News from Paraguay: A Novel by HarperCollins. When explaining some of this book´s scenes, my wife thought I had snuck a Hustler Magazine into the house. The constant reference to masturbation, penises and perversion definitely overshadowed the book´s fascinating subject.¤

6) Hardcover Book The News from Paraguay: A Novel by HarperCollins.

For him it began with a bright blue parrot feather that fell from Ella Lynch´s hat when she was horseback riding in the Bois de Boulogne. The year was 1854, and Francisco Solano Lopez -- "Franco," the future dictator of Paraguay -- began his courtship of the young, beautiful Irishwoman with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and a horse named Mathilde.

From Paris, Ella Lynch follows Franco to Asunción, where she reigns as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover´s ill-fated dream -- one fueled by outsize imperial ambition and heedless arrogance, and with devastating consequences for Paraguay and all its inhabitants.

A historical epic that tells an unusual love story, The News from Paraguay offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of nineteenth-century Paraguay, a largely untouched wilderness where Europeans and North Americans intermingle with both the old Spanish aristocracy and native Guaraní Indians.

The urgency of the narrative, the imaginative richness of its intimate detail, and the wealth of characters whose stories are skillfully layered and unfolded recall the epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. The News from Paraguay captures the devastating havoc wrought on both a country´s fate and a woman´s heart by ruthless ambition and war.

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 26-Aug-2008, 00662094479780066209449, 470-610-370-9OB-2IB-0UB-8

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