Anne Enright’s third novel,
The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch(2002), is the fictional biography of the 19th-century Irish woman who was the unofficial first lady of Paraguay’s dictator Francisco Solano López before and during the 1864-1870 war against the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Marketed as chick lit and historical romance (see the book covers of various reprints), the novel has been read by critics and reviewers as a richly textured postmodern performance, fragmentary and stylistically daring, accommodating both male and female views of history. Hermione Lee, for instance, has described it as “a rich, flamboyant, mannered book, written with condensed, self-conscious stylishness, dazzling with images and sensations and violence” (19). For Patricia Coughlan,
2110 words
Citation: Schneider, Ana-Karina. "The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 December 2018 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=38919, accessed 23 November 2024.]
