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A Novel
by Olivia Laing
Art, power, desire, and illusion collide in a hypnotic new novel from Olivia Laing, set in the months leading up to the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975.
It is September 1974. Two men meet in Venice. One, Nicholas, is a young artist, plausible, English, desperate. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the illusionist responsible for realizing the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini's Casanova. A young apprentice is just what he needs.
He brings Nicholas back to Rome and introduces him to the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova's Venice will be ingeniously assembled. In the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini's horrifying fable of fascism.
But Nicholas has a secret, and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amid the rising tensions of the Years of Lead, he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn't intend.
Olivia Laing's The Silver Book is at once a queer love story and a noir-ish thriller, set in the dream factory of cinema. It is a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.
"Rife with sensuality, illuminating archival details about the Italian film industry, and disquieting intimations about the growing social and political unrest that in only a few years would grow in terror and bloodshed...[The Silver Book is] mesmerizing, contemplative, and haunting." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An intriguing plot, but most notable is Laing's lucid showcasing of the artists' fervent yet tender collaborations, born of a shared 'love of liberty' and the 'amusement rising' in a lover's eyes. The author's fans will adore this." —Publishers Weekly
"This is a novel to fall in love with―at least I did―a canny hustler of a novel, brilliant, obsessive, hot, and yet it is also like the light on the water at night in Venice. This is the kind of novel you steal from your spouse or vice versa. And it is the work of an artist at the height of their powers―as if I could admire Laing more." ―Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
"Olivia Laing's The Silver Book is an enchanted tale of an accursed era. Young Nicholas's coming of age and romantic adventures are set against the violent period in 1970s Italy known as the Years of Lead. In spare, subjective prose, with a deep appreciation of craft, material, texture, color, Laing brilliantly evokes Cinecittà when its creative masters were at their peak: Federico Fellini, Danilo Donati, Pier Paolo Pasolini. The book manages to be both wonderfully escapist and a timely warning." ―Lucy Sante, author of I Heard Her Call My Name
This information about The Silver Book was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Jonathan Ring
Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. She's the author of seven books, including To the River (2011), The Trip to Echo Spring (2013), The Lonely City (2016) and Everybody (2021). She's a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2018 was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction. Her books have been translated into twenty-one languages.
Her first novel, Crudo, is a real-time account of the turbulent summer of 2017. It was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Laing writes on art and culture for the Guardian, Financial Times and New York Times, among many other publications. She's written catalogue essays on a variety of contemporary artists, including Andy Warhol, Agnes Martin, Derek Jarman, Wolfgang Tillmans ...
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