FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Adventurer, charlatan, musician, practitioner of the medical and kabalistic arts, Freemason, con artist, memoirist, spy, and above all, seducer of women, Giacomo Casanova (1725 - 1798) is one of the most extraordinary characters of the 18th century. The son of Venetian actors (his published assertion that his real father was Venetian nobleman would result in his second, and permanent, exile from the Republic), Casanova became the consummate actor of the age, extemporizing a lifelong performance that won him access to the highest social levels in the courts of Europe. His acquaintances included such worthies as Benjamin Franklin, the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, Catharine the Great — even Pope Clement XIII, who conferred upon him a knighthood in the Papal Order of the Holy Spur. In all, the astonishing record of his life — thoughtfully transcribed by Casanova himself in his autobiography, HISTOIRE DE MA VIE — so nearly resembles the stuff of fiction that it is difficult to know just where the historical truth begins and where it ends.

Little wonder then that few novelists have attempted to enlarge upon Casanova's version of events. That singular accomplishment belongs to English author Andrew Miller, who in CASANOVA IN LOVE undertakes an inspired psychological portrait of the legendary Venetian seducer and the Age of Enlightenment that created him.

Miller, who memorably immersed readers in the turbulent scientific, philosophical and social upheaval of the 18th century in his 1997 debut novel INGENIOUS PAIN, focuses on a crucial episode in Casanova's career —onethat Casanova himself recognized as the turning point in his life: His arrival in England in 1763, seeking respite from the excesses of his rake's progress.

—Greg Marrs

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In this captivating novel, the famed Venetian seducer and adventurer, Giacomo Casanova, relives a turning point in his life. In 1763, at the age of 38, he arrives in England seeking a respite from his restless travels and liaisons, to revive his jaded palate, and to shake off the lugubrious moods that have begun to trouble him. Before long the lure of company proves too hard to resist, and the dazzlingly pretty face of the young Marie Charpillon even harder. Casanova's pursuit of the elusive bewitcher drives him from exhilaration to despair and to flirt with the roles of laborer, writer, and country squire as he attempts to reinvent himself. Here lies a far more complex, fascinating figure than legend suggests, a charismatic man who, for all his conquests, begins to doubt his worth and purpose. It is a scintillating, poignant, often comic portrait, conjuring a decadent society in which youth and beauty formed a precariously finite currency. Following Andrew Miller's acclaimed and prize-winning debut, Casanova in Love confirms the presence of an outstanding new novelist.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Mais non, this is not the Giacomo Casanova we have come to expect. Miller gives us a 38-year-old Casanova, soul-sick (mid-life crisis, they'd say today), gone to England in 1763 to try to revive. There he is befriended by the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson and thrown under the spell of young, beautiful Marie Charpillon. Casanova's maddening attempts to win her continuously fail despite money owed him by her family; frustrated, he tries life as an onion-eater (that is, a laborer), a Grub Street hack, and a squire of a dank country estate. Sometimes funny, sometimes grim, these sidetrips are the best parts of the book; the section on the underclass would have done Dickens proud. A framing device that allows Casanova hindsight works less well and seems appended only for its rhetorical purpose. On the whole, though, as a trip back in time with a celebrity cast, this is a winner.
-- Robert E. Brown, Onondaga County Public Library, Syracuse, New York

Lorna Sage

Miller's Casanova. ..is a New Age narcissist -- so observant, so chastened, that self-love can save him after all.
-- New York Times Book Review

John Elson

. . .[S]tylishly recounted. . .has the picturesque grunge of a Hogarth sketch.
-- Time

Detroit Free Press

"Andrew Miller's lush, enthralling new novel is a wonderful companion to...Lydia Flem's stunning, intense biography Casanova: The Man Who Really Loved Women... Miller, too, makes one of the 18th Century's most intriguing figures a vivid, memorable presence... Miller evokes Casanova's amazingly complex life and paints a scintillating, evocative, erotic portrait of the 18th Century and one of its major figures." -- Detroit Free Press, December 6, 1998

Seattle Times