Lucy Beresford
Courting Casanova
In Lucia’s Eyes
By Arthur Japin (Translated by David Colmer)
(Chatto & Windus 247pp £12.99) order from our bookshop
Fact as fiction is very much in vogue, and, whilst Mark Lawson waspishly dissects the dying days of the Wilson government in his latest novel Enough is Enough, and Channel 4 explores the apparent suicide of David Kelly, it’s refreshing to see the eighteenth century enjoying similar treatment.
Lucy Jamieson really existed and was buried in a New York churchyard in 1802. She also merited a few pages in Giacomo Casanova’s memoirs for having been one of only two women he ever wronged. Japin’s well-researched novel, friskily translated from the Dutch by David Colmer, offers an intriguing conceit
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