The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch

Anne Enright, who won the Booker Prize for The Gathering has fictionalized the life of Eliza Lynch, a nineteenth century Irish woman, who by way of the role of Parisian courtesan, becomes the lover of the emergent political leader of Paraguay. Its chapters are a mix of different narrators, usually Lynch or the medical doctor Stewart, and time is not represented chronologically. Nevertheless there are some very raw scenes exposed on the Rio Parana, in Lynch's early life, and in various villages in Paraguay during conflict with the Brazilians and Argentinians. It seems that none of the characters are lionized, nor are they truly evil; and the author seems to surprise the reader by controverting this or that judgment about a particular character. The vivid picture Enright paints is full of colorful contrasts of this woman.

After reading "The Gathering," I ordered three other books by the astonishingly gifted Anne Enright, who knows all about women. One of these was "The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch." Her sometime protagonist, Eliza Lynch, a "fallen" woman who knows a good thing when she sees it, falls stone in love with a customer slated to become the next ruler of Paraguay. The first sentence of the book verges on porn, but it is one of Enright's many talents that she can mix the crude with the romantic and maintain a high level of curiosity. She has a knack of clearly distinguishing each character while not choosing sides; that is, the reader sees all the human, and in some cases inhuman, flaws in the souls that people her books. Her style may be found "jumpy" by some, as she creates flashbacks and flash forwards, and speaks in various voices, but stay with it and you'll be rewarded by mysteries solved, history revealed and enough red herrings left over to make you think and comjecture. Her knowledge of humanity is profound and she knows how to outline the attitudes of men toward women and of women toward themselves at their most primitive level. I finished this in one all-night session.

I had read a recent(and somewhat misogynist)biography of this woman, the Irish courtesan Eliza Lynch, before starting this book. The author of this novel, Anne Enright, seems to have her history right: Lynch met the Paraguayan dictator Lopez in Paris and became pregnant by him before returning with him to Paraguay. There, she was reviled by high and low, probably because she was considered shameless (she did not hide her relationship with Lopez), tried to bring Parisian "culture" to this backwater, helped herself to the country's wealth (it was rich in yerba maté) and encouraged Lopez in his grandiose ambitions, resulting in simultaneous war with Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina; a war that killed tens of thouands, saw the country's wealth destroyed and Lopez himself lose his life. Historic sources say that Lynch not only did nothing to restrain Lopez's brutality, but even added to it by seeking revenge against those among Paraguayan society (such as Lopez's family) who disdained her.Enright, writing in the third and first person (Lynch herself), brings this story to life vividly, especially in describing Lynch's first trip upriver to Asunción. Her language is colourful and evocative. The story, still sticking to history, ends with Lynch, having survived Lopez, Paraguay and the war, now in the UK and seeking damages against one of the few Europeans, a Scottish doctor named Stewart, who had remained loyal to her and her husband. History, and even this book, paints her as unsympathetic, but so seems everyone (including those who loathed her) in this sordid, brutal bit of history.