Audiobook10 hours
The News From Paraguay
Written by Lily Tuck
Narrated by Lisette Lecat
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
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About this audiobook
The year is l854. In Paris, Francisco Solano -- the future dictator of Paraguay -- begins his courtship of the young, beautiful Irish courtesan Ella Lynch with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and ahorse named Mathilde. Ella follows Franco to AsunciOn and reigns there as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated imperial dream -- one fueled by a heedless arrogance that will devastate all of Paraguay. With the urgency of the narrative, rich and intimate detail, and a wealth of skillfully layered characters, The News from Paraguay recalls the epic novels of Gabriel GarcIa MArquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Author
Lily Tuck
Lily Tuck was born in Paris and is the author of three previous novels – Interviewing Matisse, The Woman Who Walked on Water and the PEN/Faulkner award finalist Siam – as well as a collection of stories, Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived. Her fiction has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review. She lives in New York City.
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Reviews for The News From Paraguay
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
3/5
3 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Reviewers have compared this to novels by garcia marquez and vargas llosa, but i don't think the writers have much in common besides their subject matter - central and south america. depicting imperial ambition and human tragedy, the prose is sparse yet powerful when addressing the numerous atrocities committed by the paraguayan dictator in his misguided and disastrous war against his neighbors. kind of dragged on while i was reading it, but now that it's finnished, it's definitely something that stays with you. very realistic in the way it moves in and out of the lives of so many people, providing vivid vignettes that coalesce into paraguay itself, which in turn is connected to a broader, global picture through epistolary and ideological links to distant paris.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Just finished this book a few minutes ago, so these are the off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts. This book won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2004, and I can see why. It's very well written with short but vivid chapters; very action-packed, and evocative of a time and place most people know nothing about. It was fascinating. But, heavens, it was horrifying. As JMT mentioned, it's about a Paraguayan dictator who declared war on Brazil and other neighboring countries. War is never pretty, and Tuck certainly doesn't try to glorify it in any way. She shows just how awful it was, and in the Paraguayans' case, it was horrendous; before the war, the country had over a million citizens. After the war, less than 200,000. But it wasn't the large scale annihilation that got to me, it was the small acts of cruelty. The unnecessary evil. The baseness to which humans descend. I like to think that people, on the whole, are good and kind by nature. Stories like this one make me question that basic philosophy.All said, I think this was a very good book and one I'm glad I read. Even if I did find it troubling.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I agree that the novel seemed more about Paraguay and less about exploring the characters. It seemed to skim over the characters' lives. It was a bit of a dirty book, and I felt sometimes as if I had to look over my should to make sure no one was catching me reading it. :) I read it a couple times and then gave it away.
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