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Rating: 
Summary: Carmen of the Parana? Not Quite
Review: The ingredients of a great tragic opera are all there. Elisa Lynch, a mid-nineteenth's century Irish beauty escapes Algerian boredom to become a courtesan in Paris. She charms the dashing young son of Paraguay's founder of the nation and follows him to Asuncion. As the country modernises, the economy blossoms and expands, she rides the crest to become the country's richest and most powerful - if hardly the most loved or respected - woman. Her lover, now the Mariscal Presidente - gets himself involved in a war with Brazil. He loses as he must, and with his teen age son is killed on his retreat into the mountain wilderness of the interior. Elisa, who has steadied him in the battlefield while plundering the city and grabbing lands the size of Belgium, follows him to the end and buries and reburies them after drunken soldiers have violated the grave, then vanishes slowly in post-Napoleonic France.Was she a woman so cold that she could please anyone? Was it greed, ambition, circumstances - or simply all-overriding love? Hillary Clinton might know - but she would not tell. Nor, in the end can Siân Rees. Unlike in The Floating Brothel there is no human story from that time she can follow - just history. Unable to write a novel, she meanders like the Rio Paraguay among the marshes and the banks covered with orange trees and, searching for Elisa' Lynch' shadows, is lost emotionally. A great story but not quite the great historical book one would expect from a writer noted for her compassionate love and her ability to portray historical events through contemporary eyes, values, and sensibilities. I suspect that Siân knew it, and tried to hurry the job along. As a result it is too long, and confusingly told. The maps at the beginning are tantalising and they are useless. Between blancos and colorados she cannot quite make out who is who. Nor can the reader. But what a plot for a movie. Where are you, Luchino Visconti?
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