My sixth and final review for the The Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge takes us to the jungles of Paraguay. Lily Tuck brings us The News from Paraguay, during the late 1800s in a time of war and turmoil for this land-locked country in South America.

I always find it nice to have a map when I’m journeying in a foreign land. The adventure takes us from Paris, across the Atlantic Ocean to enter the South American continent at Buenos Ayres. We can track our course along the map as we travel up the Paraguay River in Argentina to reach the river’s namesake country, enjoying the lush foliage, colorful birds and chirping monkeys, all the while fearing the crocodiles and swatting the mosquitoes.

This historical novel gives us a look at the tragic reign of Francisco “Franco” Lopez. Inspired by the French, Franco sees himself as an emperor trying to conquer the Brazilians and their allied forces from Argentina and Banda Orientale (now Uruguay). The story follows his paramour as she travels with him from Paris into the jungles and bears him many sons. Though she is rejected by his family, Franco builds her a beautiful mansion, showers her with gifts and adores their sons.

The story is written in short segments as though emulating news briefs, shifting quickly from one character to the next, a collection of narratives, diary entries, letters and excerpts from official documents. It was a little hard to follow at first as we jumped from one point of view to another, and Tuck writes a lot of sentences that interrupt themselves with parenthetical interjections.

Because of this news clip style, the story lacks any in-depth character development, but overall, it was well researched and masterfully written, a good read, entertaining and educational.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 16th, 2007 at 10:48 am and is filed under Latin America, competetive reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.