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Casanova
On sale
18th July 2019
Price: £19.99
Giacomo Casanova arrives in England in the summer of 1763 at the age of thirty-eight, seeking a respite from his restless travels and liaisons. But the lure of company proves too hard to resist and the dazzlingly pretty face of young Marie Charpillon even harder. Casanova’s pursuit of this elusive bewitcher drives him from exhilaration to despair and to attempt to reinvent himself in the roles of labourer, writer and country squire. Based on a little-known episode in Casanova’s life, this is a scintillating, poignant, often comic portrait of a far more complex figure than legend suggests and of the decadent society in which he operated.
(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
(P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
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Reviews
His writing is vivid, precise and constantly surprising. I was absolutely captivated by it . . . I wish I'd written it
Sparkling and lavishly detailed . . . rich without being cloying; resonant of time and place while remaining fresh and modern . . . he captures brilliantly the downfall and partial redemption of this charming isolate
Full-bodied yet razor-sharp . . . Period detail, which so often reveals only that the writer has commendably and carefully studied a contemporary portrait, in Miller's hands takes us into the heart of 18th-century London so that we can almost smell and touch it . . . its fetid atmosphere almost making the reader itch
I was thoroughly amused, stimulated, entertained and instructed by the whole book . . . I don't think I've read anything which has brought 18th-century London so powerfully to life . . . brilliantly acute
Exquisite . . . Miller's elegant prose is laced with luxurious imagery and wry humour . . . beautifully and sensitively written
Miller is a pellucid, evocative writer: he brings alive the thick fogs over the Thames, the dreary winter countryside, the lamp-lit London streets . . . A beautiful evocation of a few months of this womaniser's life
Andrew Miller's forte is painting verbal landscapes, laying the words just so. At times it's like a fine miniature, delicate with atmosphere and smoke and gleam
Miller again shows his mastery of historical fiction in this fine, elegiac book
Miller's elegiac meditation on life, love and mortality is deep, poignant and funny
Glittering . . . There are descriptive passages of extraordinary power and beauty
Miller is knowing, ironic, and playful in his new novel . . . The prose is flawless
Immensely readable . . . a well-crafted page-turner which certainly delivers
Miller is astonishingly assured in handling the novel's lush complexities of time and place, of nationality, and of the intricate workings of Casanova's troubled mind . . . His achievement here is to make of the legendary Casanova not some brightly colored historical oddity but, more subtly, a man
Worth reading for its evocation of 18th-century London alone. Silken boudoirs, pestilent hovels and pleasure gardens are all brought to magical life
Miller's prose is jewelled . . . What Casanova wrote with a swagger resurfaces here as an elegant, elegiac meditation on the death of purpose
A perfectly crafted picture of 18-century London and its visiting predator in language as delicate as the tendrils of fog that curl off the Thames, and as forceful as the fetid odours conjured up in the background