The Mysterious Disappearance of the Marquise of Loria

This brilliant erotic romp from Donoso (The Obscene Bird of Night) follows a young Nicaraguan woman’s disastrous entry into Madrid high society after WWI. Blanca Arias, the teen daughter of a diplomat, is left alone in the Spanish capital after the Nicaraguan regime falls and her parents return home. She enjoys five months of marriage to Paquito, an “opulent but inept” marquess who is heir to the “substantial” fortune of the House of Loria. When Paquito dies suddenly, Blanca, now the Marquise of Loria, inherits the family fortune thanks to her husband’s effort to keep the money away from his “vulture” of a mother, Casilda. As a 19-year-old widow, Blanca then undertakes a series of exquisitely detailed sexual adventures with the elderly family notary, the count who lives off Blanca’s inheritancee, a handsome painter she meets in a park, and others. Meanwhile, Casilda plots to seize the fortune, and the painter’s dog assumes an increasingly sinister role in Blanca’s life. Translator McDowell handily preserves Donoso’s delectable prose style (one of Blanca’s lovers “tuned her body like an exquisitely sensitive instrument, transforming it into a sumptuous object of the softest silk”). The result is a pitch-perfect tale of sex and intrigue. (Mar.)