M Caruso

I really, really wanted to like this book. I did like Edith Templeton's Summer in the Country a lot, as well as her travel book, The Surprise of Cremona. Murder in Estoril also intrigued me because although her books were mostly written in the 50s, this one came out much later--in 1992. Templeton obviously knew her way around a sentence, and the first part of the book is not too bad. But the narrator never feels fully formed or real, and I couldn't figure out what it was she wanted. It was difficult to follow the timeline, the events, and the motivations of the characters. In addition, the second half of the book is disturbing in an uninteresting way. The narrator allows herself to be essentially enslaved by a man who sexually violates her and I have to say, this kind of oh-it's-so-exciting-when-he-treats-me-like-an-object atmosphere does not age well in the era of #MeToo. I think writers shouId be able to write about people in all kinds of situations, but I don't think they should drag us through cruelty between people without any point. The novel ends with this man (I couldn't figure out how he fit into the events in the first part of the book) yet again having violent sex with the narrator. But why? The books feels unresolved, except that there wasn't that much to resolve in the first place. Was the man in the second part of the book in some way responsible for the murder in the title? I don't know. Maybe I stopped giving it my full attention and missed something, or maybe it just wasn't there. I know Templeton is also admired for her novel Gordon, which is about a woman who is in a sexually masochistic position with her psychiatrist. I'm not sure how that topic serves either novel, but she certainly seemed compelled to write about it.