Casanova's Women Judith Summers Bloomsbury, 368pp, £20 ISBN 0747577447
Judith Summers's engrossing new book explores the life of the renowned seducer Giacomo Casanova by shedding light on some of his conquests and looking at the female influences in his life.
This is not an exhaustive account. Summers cherry-picks the most interesting characters, including Casanova's mother, Zanetta, who apparently cared little for her son, sending him away at the age of nine; Bettina Gozzi, the young girl who gave Casanova his first erection; and the libidinous nun known in Casanova's writings only as MM.
At the same time as assessing the likely candidates for the aristocratic Henriette, Casanova's great love and the closest he came to an ideal match, Summers does not neglect the more ambiguous aspects of
her subject's sexuality, detailing his attraction to the famed castrato Bellino. But despite the research and masterly novelistic flourishes, it remains difficult to fathom what drove Casanova in his
need to possess – or deflower – every attractive woman he encountered. Or, for that matter, to understand what rendered him so devastatingly attractive that women continually cast aside husbands and risked social ruin for the briefest of liaisons. Despite Summers's best efforts, the man remains as elusive as ever.
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