The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch by Anne Enright - first published in the UK in 2002
Books set in Paraguay are thin on the ground and I had already read The News from Paraguay by Lily Tuck, which is also a fictionalised account of the life of Eliza Lynch, and is in my opinion a much more intelligible story.
The real Eliza Lynch was born in Ireland in 1835 and emigrated to Paris with her parents when she was 10. She met Francisco Solano Lopez, who was the son of the President of Paraguay in Paris in 1854. She became his mistress and returned to Paraguay with him and they had 6 children together. Lopez became President in 1862 after the death of his father and in 1864 the War of the Triple Alliance broke out - Paraguay versus Argentina, Brazil and Uruaguay. It lasted until 1870 when Lopez was killed.
The books is not presented in chronological order and none of the history of Paraguay before or during the war is explained at all. Lopez only appears as a minor character in the story. The result of this was that I was very disorientated by the book and didn't quite manage to grasp what was going on. 2/10
31st January 2012
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