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Chargement... The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002)par Anne Enright
Chargement...
Inscrivez-vous à LibraryThing pour découvrir si vous aimerez ce livre Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre. 'A woman...is all reputation because she may not act' Unrecognisable from Ms Enright's other works, this is written very much in the dreamlike style of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The chronology is fluid: the account of Irishwoman Eliza Lynch's journey into Paraguay, in the company of her lover, Francisco Solano Lopez - son and heir to the dictator - is interspersed with other chapters from later in her career, most notably the War of the Triple Alliance, with its massive casualties. Although parts of the narrative are in Eliza's own words, she remained quite an enigma. Was she worthy of the scorn poured upon her by the Paraguayan ladies as an 'Irish whore'? Was she as responsible as her fearsome husband (who was prone to killing his own men) for the bloodshed? Or a brave and noble woman? A much clearer character was Doctor Stewart, physician to the family and sometime narrator. Ms Enright notes that this is all fiction: 'this Is Not True', and I see another reviewer more knowledgable about Eliza Lynch finds fault with the novel for the spin she has put on Lynch. I would say that as someone with absolutely no prior knowledge of Paraguayan history, this work has massively stirred my interest in the subject, and I plan to read a biography of this lady sometime. very evocative, Enright kind of taps into that dreamscape that is one of the trademarks of South American writing (see Allende). Her narrative flow can be almost too discursive at times, though -- I found myself almost unsure of what kind of traumatic events had occurred, and the disordered chronology didn't help, either. Still. Excellent.
Slighted pride is the motive Eliza's recent biographers produce for her behavior. It seems inadequate. Enright produces a more nuanced cause -- deprivation -- that she buries in such a wealth of virtuoso imagery that it is not immediately apparent. Appartient à la série éditorialebtb (74199)
Beautiful Irishwoman Eliza Lynch became briefly, in the 1860s, the richest woman in the world. The book opens in Paris with Eliza in bed with Francisco Solano Lopez - heir to the untold wealth of Paraguay. The fruit of their congress will be extraordinary, and will send her across the Atlantic on the regal voyage to claim her glorious future in Asunción. With the lavish imaginative richness of Márquez and the crazed panoramic sweep of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch is a bold and brilliantly achieved novel about sex, beauty and corruption at the end of the old world. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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The book does its best to rehabilitate Lynch, who has often been treated unkindly by history (to the extent that she is sometimes blamed for provoking the war). In Enright's treatment she is simply a woman who has had a hard early life and is now trying to make the best life she can for herself in the strange world she has strayed into. I'm not sure if I was completely convinced. There seems to be a lot about Lynch that Enright isn't discussing. But it's an entertaining, exotic story about an unusual historical figure I didn't know about. ( )