The News from Paraguay: A Novel
by Lily Tuck
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 279)
Read in July, 2008
This National Book Award winner is historical fiction set in Paris, Buenos Aires, London, and Paraguay in the 1850s and 60s. The main story follows the life of a beautiful Irish girl who becomes a powerful courtesan in aristocratic Paris then moves to Paraguay as the common law wife of a violent, ambitious, ruthless, macho general who becomes president and dictator. We trace her life experience and his after they meet, the perspectives and encounters with them of a range of peoples from differen...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
no one
This book was loaned to me by someone who's taste in reading I respect, and the other night I was talking to my oldest friend in the world and she told me how much she loved the book, but it did nothing for me - except to make me wonder how such a poorly written story could get published. I think the two main problems I had with the book was the poor writing and jumping. When you have to go back over a sentence 2 or 3 times to understand what the writer is trying to say, then there's a problem...more
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Read in August, 2008
If you enjoy Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I bet you'll like this read. I do and I did. It's historical fiction with the author reminding us that the emphasis is on the noun in that description. Although I enjoyed the history aspect (too unbelievable to be fiction), I LOVED Tuck's ability to paint the clearest pictures of all of her characters. Every single person, from the leading man and woman down to the brothers in the army, comes to life with their mini-sagas. You understand them, even if you...more
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Read in January, 2006
Our book club chose this selection and prior to reading it, I glanced over the reviews posted on amazon.com. Based on the low ratings, I was ready for a slow and unsophisticated novel. I was very pleasantly surprised. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and especially appreciated the various perspectives from which the story was told. The book is composed of a series of vignettes and I thought rather than slow the story, it allowed the reader to understand these events in history and the motivations ...more
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Read in January, 2008
Unrelenting sex drives, senseless murders, a brutal war, intriguing foreign locations, unconscionable acts, out of control masturbation, insanity topped by humiliation like a pineapple perched on an ice cream sundae, and consternation of purpose must be the elements necessary to win the National Book Award. This novel had it all and won that honor. But it lacks a sense of continuity, character depth, and an overarching theme. Passages of extraordinary beauty dot the novel. Small empathetic scene...more
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Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
Historical novel buffs, everyone
Rich in color and texture, Tuck's style plunges you headfirst into the lives of Ella, Franco, and the many other exciting characters that come & go in this book. Unfamiliar with Tuck's writing at first, I was a little put off by the similarties between her style & that of one of my favorite authors, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. However, as the book progressed I was able to follow and understand her approach to the characters and the narration, not to mention the huge difference between her ...more
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Read in September, 2007
recommends it for:
nobody
Probably the worst book I read this year - and it won a prestigious book award and glowing reviews. How?! This author's idea of depicting culture in that part of South America is to mention all the mate people drink. Sere's a hint, mate is about as ubiquitous in that part of the world as Starbucks is in the US. So it's not a terribly clever technique. Also, her idea of character development is to go into TMI detail about the sexual proclivities and back histories of every single character. Again...more
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Read in January, 2006
Good God, this book was awful. One of the remarkably few books I've never finished. A spoiled brat from Paris in the 1850s marries a Paraguayan dictator and moves to Paraguay. The story tells of her pathetic struggle to survive in the tropics, choppily switching from different characters' points of view. Just as you would start to get a teensy bit interested in the story, the chapter would end and it would move on to some other non-related part of the story, told by some other non-related ch...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in April, 2007
Too gory for me. Nothing I read resounded with me at all. I am fascinated by the glimpse I got of 19th-century Paraguay, but I think I'll seek out other sources to find out more. You know, sources that have details other than dogs getting beaten to death and people's arms getting chopped off. Maybe that was the reality for that place and time, but I can only stomach gore like that if I'm devoted to the characters and impressed with the writing, neither of which applied here.
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
those who enjoy historical fiction
I stopped into a bookstore last week to pick up some light reading for the bus. The News From Paraguay turned out to be a great book to read on the bus because of the style - switching back and forth between povs, letter excerpts, etc. The story turned out to be a bit heavier than I had bargained for - General Franco's Paraguay, yikes! But I enjoyed the story, most of it, I cringed during some of the battle/war scenes. However, overall well written and engaging.
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Read in March, 2007
I thought this novel was only about a Paraguayan dictator's courtship of Ella, and Ella's eventual move to Paraguay from France. Because the most romantic notion in the world to me is living abroad again, especially with a dashing future husband, I was really excited to read this book. My dream plot ended after 50 pages. After that the novel launches into a boring description of Paraguayan expansion. I couldn't finish reading.
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Read in November, 2006
I wanted to like this book, I really did. Political intrigue, women's history, all set in South America. But it was choppy and hard to keep track of characters. And there were a lot of characters. I know very little about South American history, so I can't speak to the historical accuracy of the book, but if I didn't like it much as a novel, I probably would find some issues with the history, if I bothered to look.
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Based on the lovely cover, I decided to read this book. Also, it won an award. Kudos to it. Too bad it wasn't very good. The whole thing read like a news report, which perhaps was the idea. It didn't work though, as the characters were rather flat, the action wasn't very interesting, and I was left wondering, "why should care what happens in this book?" The premise was quite interesting though.
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in January, 2007
I don't know why this won The National Book Award - I kept reading it thinking it would get better and b/c the premise was an interesting one about the dictator of Paraguay in the 1850's, explicitly based on some facts. But I found it choppy and not held together, with no sympathetic characters or depth to any of them. It felt like a writing exercise, rather than a novel.
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Hm. Decidedly nonmemorable. Unless you really like Paraguay. And even then. And yet, still, I read it and mostly enjoyed it. Latin America, what can I say? All things being equal it's better to read about than England. Usually all things are not equal. But and so, I'd rather read a lousy book about Paraguay than an equally lousy book about the English.
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I heard about this book from a CD of another book I was listening to (not sure which one), and it sounded like something I would like. Sadly,I got about 20 pages into this book and after about 2o(that may be a bit of an exaggeration) references to sex, I put the book down. Unless you want to be assaulted with that subject, do not read this book.
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Read in July, 2006
MB gave me this for Christmas and I didn't read it for a while because I was on a nonfiction kick. I didn't love the book but it did remind me I loved fiction. About the lover of the dictator of Paraguay, war, and the difficulty of life then. I found the characters to be undeveloped and unlikable and the plot to be too jumpy.
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Read in July, 2008
ella lynch is franco lopez's lover. franco becomes the president of paraguay which is soon as war with brazil. a fascinating read that follows threads of several different characters. franco becomes a despotic leader yet ella stands by him during the toughest of times. set during mid to late 1800's.
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Read in January, 2005
It's worth it to look up the biography of Eliza Lynch in the Oxford National Biography because it gives a bit more background on her that's not necessarily fiction...it also explains why she was considered a mistress by everyone except the people of Paraguay. What an intriguing story. Check it out!
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don't let the cover of this violent story fool you, just after that cover picture was taken, not only does the pretty young thing get mauled by the bull - the entire village does too.
Despicable characters doing despicable things with out the gossip buzz of Dangerous Liasions.
Despicable characters doing despicable things with out the gossip buzz of Dangerous Liasions.
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