Love In The Time Of Chauvinism

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday January 29, 2005

Paul Maley, Paul Maley is a freelance writer and media analyst.

Paul Maley finds torrid affairs, dashing dictators and attention to detail make for a racy read.

The News From Paraguay

By Lily Tuck

HarperCollins, 272pp, $24.95

Set in the mid-19th century, The News From Paraguay is a historical novel that takes as its inspiration the disastrous war Paraguay would embark upon against the Triple Alliance of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

It would prove exceptionally destructive, both in human and economic costs. Paraguay's economy would be decimated and about half its population wiped out. According to Lily Tuck, the principal cause of the war was the bloated chauvinism of Paraguay's President, one Francisco "Franco" Solano Lopez.

At the centre of Tuck's novel is the story of Franco's love affair with Ella Lynch, his Irish-born Josephine. Franco is a South American dictator to whom all the usual cliches apply: vain, flashy, oversexed, brutal, a drunk. He charges off into battle with a cigar in his mouth and a marching band in tow. He leads his country into a ruinous war, gets horribly thumped and then dies a patriot's death on the battlefield.

Ella's character is scarcely more complex. We encounter the beautiful young courtesan in France, where she is a fixture in the salons of Parisian high society, as well as a few of its bedrooms. While out riding one day, a feather falls from her hat and catches the young Franco's eye. He pursues her with the requisite vigour, seduces her and takes her back to Asuncion, Paraguay's capital, where he installs her as his mistress. There she lives a life of secluded privilege: riding, fencing, rearing his children and occupying an Evita-like presence on the fringes of power. It is all as one might expect.

What's odd about Franco and Ella's relationship is why it exists at all. Beyond mere convenience, the source of their love is never really explained. "I am under your feet like the grass, and in your hand like a rose," Franco tells Ella in one of his more snag-ish moments, but Tuck never really tells us how he got to this point. Ditto with Ella. What makes an opportunist like Ella stick with Franco after the bullets have begun to fly and the good life has sunk beneath the mud?

Clearly, there is something forceful at the heart of things, but it exists by inference only. The reader simply never sees it. In the end, Ella and Franco's love affair feels oddly perfunctory, like a Post-It note stuck onto a history essay.

Part of the problem is that The News From Paraguay is a very crowded novel. Characters streak across the pages in tight, narrow arcs, too fleeting for the reader to get any real sense of who they are. Many are intriguing, but few seem important. With so much to do, it is no wonder Tuck never quite gets around to introducing us fully to her two main characters.

The narrative, too, moves at a cracking pace. It is fed to us via a series of truncated yet elegant instalments, most of which are no more than a paragraph long. One of the book's most satisfying features is Tuck's attention to historical detail, which is exceptionally well realised; but it is not quite enough to compensate for the book's busyness.

The News From Paraguay caused a minor stir in the United States after it won the National Book Award, despite tepid reviews and modest sales. One can see why. Gilded salons, kept women, dashing dictator types and torrid love affairs waged 'midst history's grand sweep - there's a sense in which the novel should have written itself, yet somehow it doesn't. Or perhaps it does, but suffers by weight of comparison. After all, this is well-trodden turf and, thanks to the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the bar for this sort of story has been set high. Tuck almost gets there, but not quite.

© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald

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