Reviewed by Jes Burns

What is more conceivable? That the average person could locate Paraguay on a map of the world, or that if you had traveled to Paraguay anytime in the past 150 years you would be at least mentioned in John Gimlette’s newest literary endeavor. Definitely the latter – for At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay is a disjointed and thickly written laundry list of names, places, and events. Part travel log, part social, political, and military history, the format is anecdotal, never chronological, and seemingly written by an author suffering from an acute case of Attention Deficit Disorder.

But Paraguay is complex and anomalous; arguably the more convoluted and bizarre the choice of episode and order, the more accurately the country is portrayed. Paraguay is a sleepy country, landlocked and consequently insular for much of its history. Until a few decades ago, totalitarianism was standard. Even with the onset of democracy, the people have yet to elect someone they actually want in office. The country received a strange mix of immigrants from Europe and elsewhere: from Nazis on the run, to Australian socialists, from Hungarians to French colonists. The most infamous First Lady was a beautiful and vindictive Irish prostitute. Paraguay straddles the line of jungle and desert, and ultimately, none of it really makes sense.

Despite the clutter, many of the chapters stand alone quite convincingly. Often lines and turns of phrases warrant reading aloud to others in the room. Gimlette speaks of a dermatologist who “as his practice had expanded, so had his house, creeping in lumps and growths first into the garden and then up the back.” But overall, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig leaves the reader struggling to find cohesion; the lack of a solid narrative thread leaves the smaller anecdotes that really work hanging with no support. The book reads like a newspaper serial combined willy-nilly into an ill-conceived anthology.