M.R. Lovric's debut novel is a lush account of love and intrigue in 18th-century Venice ... A dazzling baroque tale Sunday Tribune Lovric immerses us in the life and loves of beautiful Cecilia, the artistic daughter of an eighteenth-century Venetian merchant. The setting is faded yet decadent - think gondalas, palazzi, delicate food and amorous trysts. It's a lavish description of a sensual education that drips detail and drama ELLE Venice, the decadent, beautiful and doomed city is the setting for this quasi-historical drama set during the last decades of the 18th century and the opening years of the 19th. This novel mixes fiction with reality as surely as water mixes with the air and stone in that strange floating city ... Part love story, part lesson in aesthetics, part history lesson, this is a fascinating book Tatler A lush book, dripping with opulent descriptions and elegant imagery ... Ambitiously imagined Australian Book Review A truly sensual glide Lisa St Aubin de Teran There is something irresistible about trying to trace a connection between notorious lover and memoirist Casanova notorious lover and poet Lord Byron in Venice the seductive city where both men worked their way through galleries of women ... Maybe Casanovrians play the same game that Byronists play, the search for the missing link, the one unknown woman who will make sense of some strange bits of Byron's life. M. R. Lovric, in her first novel, has gone one better, conjuring not only the woman who makes sense of Casanova's story, but who, thirty-odd years later, solves Byron's story as well ... This is a lush book, dripping with opulent descriptions and elegant imagery ... Ambitiously imagined Australian Book Review Think gondolas and pigeons and A Room with a View ... a dreamy, fantastical novel Sunday Business Post Cecilia is a charming character and this is a touching ... even moving read Independent on Sunday Extraordinary, an intriguing, magical tale woven around the enigmatic character and grandeur of the Venetian Republic AXM Rarely have I seen a historical period so brilliantly portrayed. Lovric has brought Venice to life in all of its tattered glory Historical Novel Society Lovric has made the city she loves into a character in its own right in her sumptuous debut novel WHO The writing is sensual in a poetic kind of way ... elegant with witty turns of phrase Melbourne Age Review Whether imagined as fiction or documented in history, the coming of age of a woman in Venice promises a provocative tale ... Cecilia tells her own story in a confessional, first-person narrative - with occasional comments from Casanova's sage and world-weary cat - but in her intimate account Venice appears as a ghostly presence Art Quarterly

Michelle Lovric is the author of four other novels - The Floating Book (winner of a London Arts Award and chosen as a WH Smith Read of the Week), The Remedy (Longlisted for the Orange Prize 2005), The Book of Human Skin (a TV Book Club pick in 2011), and, most recently, The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters, as well as four children's books. Her book Love Letters: An Anthology of Passion was a New York Times bestseller. She divides her time between London and Venice. www.michellelovric.com