CARNEVALE.

CARNEVALE by M.R.LOVRIC. 

SOURCE: Bought by Husband dearest.

1782. The 13-year old daughter of a Venetian merchant family is lured naked from her bath by a stray cat and finds herself in the arms of Casanova - the legendary seducer of women.

Twenty-five years later Cecilia is in Albania, now a portrait painter of some renown, her fame in this area eclipsed only by her reputation as the last woman in Venice to have been loved by Casanova. Enter a young man from England, a troubled poet, looking for adventure at any price - a man who begins his affair with Cecilia with the announcement 'I rather look on love as a hostile transaction.' For Cecilia, who had blossomed under the tender, unselfish love of another man, Byron proves a rude awakening.

While Casanova hid nothing from her, Byron hides everything, but she paints rich portraits of both men. This unique and extraordinary novel combines sensuous descriptions of painting with rich portraits of real people, all set against the decaying grandeur of Venice.
...... Amazon product description.

FIRST SENTENCE {Prologue}: Before you hear about it at Florian, let me tell you what happened next.

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 220}: The hour of the cat draws near. The sun dies in the arms of the evening. We cats take to our roofs. We walk over the terracotta tiles with a delicacy you cannot imagine, lifting our paws high like Spanish horses.

MY THOUGHTS: Silly o'clock, Friday night/Saturday morning. I've only just finished part one and already I'm loosing sleep wondering how to review this complex, over-long (628 pages), rambling four part debut novel.

Mid-afternoon Monday and I'm finally finished what turned out to be an awfully long-winded book that as well as the main story also saw many asides which included Casanova's cat voicing his opinions in chapters titled 'The Cat Speaks'.

Not as I had expected, this isn't so much the story of the fictional artist Cecilia Cornaro as it is the stories of Casanova and to an even greater extent Byron.

Seamlessly entwining fact with fiction, the author has obviously thoroughly researched the lives of both Casanova and Byron. Beautifully written in so much as its poetic without being too flowery, its evocative of what I should imagine Venice was like at this time. Occasionally risque verging on the erotic. Whilst personally sentences like "'But my steed is presently resting in his stable.' He pointed at his depleted organ" did little other than make me laugh out loud (perhaps intentionally so) I admit that I found some of the other, less tongue-in-cheek, scenes (the almost sixty year old Casanova seducing the then 13 year old Cecilia to say nothing of Byron's sexual abuse at the hands of his nanny) a bit unpalatable.

Though essentially a novel with great potential I'm afraid the lack of narrative tension (despite it being a rather lengthy tome surprisingly little actually happens) made for a rather disappointing read in need of some severe editing. 

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