The Silver Book

by Olivia Laing

At once a queer love story and a noirish thriller, set in the dream factory of cinema, The Silver Book is a fictional account of real things, and an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, love and power.

It is September 1974 and two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova, and a youthful - and beautiful - apprentice is just what he needs.

He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then 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. Amidst the rising political tensions of Italy's 'Years of Lead', he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Italy, Literary Fiction, Historical

242 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 11, 2025

About the author

Olivia Laing is a writer and critic. She’s the author of To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring and The Lonely City, which has been translated into 17 languages and sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Her collected essays, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, were published in 2020.

Her first novel, Crudo, is a real-time account of the turbulent summer of 2017. It was a Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a New York Times notable book of 2018 and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2019 it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Laing’s writing about art & culture appears in the Guardian, Observer, Financial Times and frieze, among many other publications. She’s a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2018 was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction.

Her new book, Everybody: A Book About Freedom is a dazzling investigation into the body and its discontents, using the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to chart a daring course through the long struggle for bodily freedom.

Reviews

[Meike · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laing writes a fictional account of the production of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò? COUNT. ME. IN! Based on The 120 Days of Sodom, or The School of Libertinage by the Marquis de Sade, Pasolini has crafted a critique of fascism and capitalism where he takes de Sade's immoral libertines to the title-giving Salò, the capital of the Italian Social Republic (1943-1945), which was Mussolini's Nazi-backed puppet state. The director was murdered under mysterious circumstances at a beach in Ostia in November 1975, before the movie's release. One theory: He was lured to the beach to retrieve some stolen film reels from "Salò" - and Laing takes this theory and runs with it.

The story is held together by (fictional) Nicholas, a young, gay art student, who, after being involved in a public scandal, flees London for Venice, where he meets older costume and production designer Danilo Donati and becomes his apprentice and lover (the real Danilo won two Oscars). They work on Federico Fellini's Casanova and on "Salò", the latter being the focus of the novel. As Laing explains, the text shows art as a refuge: Nicholas, Danilo and Pasolini are haunted by their own demons, the movie they are working on is a medium to take revenge against violently destructive forces.

Danilo's passion for telling stories through costume and set design and Pasolini's expertise in capturing time and ideas on celluloid are central for the tone Laing chooses to convey her narrative: It is highly descriptive and elaborates extensively on visuals. Granted, good movies employ the visual to interpret the story, so that look and story form a cohesive whole, which in the case of "Salò" has an unusual amount of layers: From de Sade's philosophy that was informed by the French revolution, Pasolini's historical focus on Italian fascism and his ideas about capitalism, to the connection between these men's worlds of ideas - bodies as commodities, sex as violence, sex as power. Plus there is the complex relationship dynamic between Nicholas and Danilo, two men who work for a Catholic gay Marxist who decides to challenge the status quo and dies!

And this is where the novel falls short, IMHO: The real-life story is wrapped in violence and scandal, it has challenging philosophical depth, it is entangled in complex societal dynamics and has a lot to say about homophobia and political extremism, but Laing spends too much time designing her set, so the stage overshadows her characters and her play. I constantly felt like the story could dive deeper, especially when it comes to the ideas that concerned Pasolini (and Fellini).

I'd love to read more about the topic though.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's an interesting story here, a fictionalising of the real murder of Pier Paulo Pasolini while he was filming his 'Salò', a film which drew on Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom as a way of exposing the corruptions and violence of Mussolini's fascist Republic of Salò (1943–1945). Pasolini was outspoken in interviews highlighting what his film was doing and implicating not only the fascist state, supported by Nazi Germany, but also the complicity of the Catholic church and the CIA in their rabid crusade against communism. Laing takes this real story, including some missing reels of film which were suggested to have been a lure to get Pasolini to his place of murder, and adds in a queer young Englishman, the lover of the real-life Danilo Donati, who won an Oscar for the costume design of 'Casanova'. It is Nicholas' wide-eyed innocence and naivety through which the reader 'sees' much of the story though the source of narrative focalisation is more scattered throughout the book.

While there is fascinating detail on what happens on a film set in this period, I found the writing style oddly sterile, holding me at arm's length: the 'told' style with few scenes or dialogue ('The date is last November. You didn't tell me about this, Nico says. I was living here then. I hardly knew you, Dani says. And you didn't know anything about Italy. You hadn't even met Pasolini') almost feel like notes to the novel this hasn't yet become.

Laing's non-fiction is so intimate, so involving, so emotive that I expected something similar from her fiction - this, however, feels cold, a bit shallow and superficial - I felt like an on-looker throughout watching the action in a detached and disinterested way through a window, but it never involved or touched me and, I fear, will be instantly forgettable.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley.

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asking questions on what trust and betrayal mean. Who has power, the desired or the one who desires, and are these distinct? And do hurt people hurt people, maybe just to leave a mark that cannot be denied or erased?
It is dangerous to want someone this much, he has always known it from the very first night.

Sensual and Italian, if you told me this was written by André Aciman I would have believed you for the short chapter structure, The Silver Book starts off with a flight from London to the continent and Venice by young, red-haired Nicholas. He gets involved in Italian filmmaking where Fellini and Pasolini producing movies both about love and lust, Casanova and Solo, inspired on 120 days in Sodom. Nicholas is constantly in a precarious position due to his sexuality and being rivalled by poor and desperate Italian boys who vie for the affections of the “gods” of Cinnecita.
What Olivia Laing serves us is lush, decadent and volatile, while also asking questions on relationships and if they can be unequal for long without consequences.
I read this in a day but still think of Nicholas and his role and what the author seems to say about agency.

From the get go there are comparisons to other works that feature obsession, for instance to Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. There is a sort of artificial lightheartedness that is partly induced by Italy and partly by poppers and speed. Mussolini his influence is still tangible throughout Italy in the 1970's that is sketched here. Nicholas fucks himself into the role of assistant to the costume designer, Danilo Donati, who won the Oscar for costume design on Casanova. Dark secrets around blackmail, desire and death being close to each other emerge along the way. The question that seems to be underneath everything is if the desired or the one who desires has the real power. Even in the novel this is commented upon in a sense: The sex is a metaphor, he adds, did I say that already? Who gets fucked and how, it isn’t literal.

The cost of illusions and seduction, which is essentially all the characters concern themselves on sets, catering to the whims of genius, comes into play. What does trust and betrayal mean in a world where everything is constructed?
There is an obsession with Pasolini by Nicholas that is mentioned but under the surface does a lot. There are always consequences someone thinks, and with some of the latter parts of the novel I think there might be a dynamic in play that one wants, through an action that is not much recognised within the narrative we are told, to secure a place in the pantheon and be impossible to forget?
An impressive work that transports one to Italy and the fevers of a relationship that just starts and has no immediately visible future. Feverish and under appreciated!

Quotes:
It’s easy to smile, easy to say yes.

The emotional burden of self invention

1975 Nicholas says now. People can walk on the moon and I can’t kiss you in the street in daylight. My parents killed me and ever since than I have sort of been dead.

Our life is up against the wall

We’re not perverts but labourers in the dream factory

The stories are not the same, but Nicholas does not say that. He understands they are about guilt and queerness. About being the person who survives, who is condemned to spend the rest of their life throwing himself again and again against the electric rail. The person who writes poems, chases boys, the alleycat. Never not on trial

Because violence buys silence

I’m going to fuck you against the window with all the gondolas going by. Don’t make a sound; if you do everyone will see you.

It is dangerous to want someone this much, he has always known it from the very first night.

Love is the punishment, the final twist

[Alwynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This falls somewhere between homage to classic Italian cinema, queer love story, historical fiction, and political polemic. A combination that’s sometimes productive and sometimes highly frustrating. Set over 1974/5, it’s primarily presented from the perspective of fictional Nicholas Wade, a gay, English art student in his early 20s. A series of events, only later revealed, lead to Nicholas deciding he has to flee London, eventually washing up in Venice. A place he thinks may be one where he can effectively disappear. There he meets the older Danilo, an established art director and set designer for numerous arthouse film directors. Danilo is a version of real-life Danilo Donati, someone Olivia Laing’s dubbed the “secret magician of Italian cinema.” Nicholas’s tentative relationship with Danilo leads him to work in production, first on the set of Fellini’s overblown Casanova, then Pier Paolo Pasolini’s now-notorious Salò.

Fellini’s connection to the once-iconic Cinecittà film studio is the first gesture towards an exploration of fascism that subsequently becomes an explicit theme. Cinecittà’s origins are famously bound up with the heyday of Italian fascism. Fellini’s difficulties funding and progressing his movie enable Danilo, with Nicholas in tow, to collaborate with charismatic poet, playwright, activist and auteur Pasolini. Pasolini is embarking on what was to become his most controversial production, a work loosely based on De Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom but equally intended as a commentary on Italy’s fascist past and critique of its troubled “neo-fascist” present – in an era referred to as the “anni di piombo” or “years of lead.” The film’s title refers to events following Mussolini’s removal from power in 1943 when his German allies installed him as leader of a putative, rival state in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic (RSI). Mussolini’s base was in the town Salò, and his new regime was often referred to as the Republic of Salò. From Salò, Mussolini ensured that Germany’s wishes were realised, his Republic was the scene of round-ups, sustained persecution of Jews and partisans punctuated by massacres, murders and summary executions. For Danilo and Pasolini Salò is more than historical fact, it’s part of their lived experience, traumatic scenes from that era haunt them both.

Laing’s depiction of Nicholas and Danilo’s working process, and Danilo’s artistic vision, is richly detailed, it’s clear they’re a huge fan of Danilo’s creative output. Their novel overall is exceptionally well-researched, it features some marvellous descriptive passages, and an emphasis on the visual underlines the centrality of cinema, voyeurism and illusion, to the narrative. Compared to their first novel, Laing’s prose style’s considerably more accomplished but the pacing’s often awkward, and the level of detail often overwhelms the story and slender plotting. I also had issues with Nicholas’s character; I just didn’t find him particularly interesting or convincing. There was something flat, static even about his portrayal – although this improved in the novel’s final stages. I also felt the various plot strands pulled focus from each other, so that the commentary on the rise of fascism - clearly meant to conjure the spectre of the rise of the far right in today’s Europe - doesn’t carry sufficient weight. It’s frequently overshadowed by Nicholas’s apparent trauma, the progression of his affair with Danilo, the travails of film-making and so on…I could see that Nicholas’s storyline was also meant to highlight exploitation and relations of power but I found it distracting and a tad too obvious.

I often found myself wondering what the novel was ultimately meant to be about. What concerns, what arguments were supposed to be emerging from its pages. But I’m a fan of the period of Italian cinema this relates to, although more of Pasolini than Fellini – I much prefer his earlier work – so I enjoyed the additional information about what was happening behind the scenes of their movies. It’s just that much of that information seemed irrelevant or extraneous to the story. Sections of the narrative are taken up with blow-by-blow accounts of relatively banal occurrences contributing to my overall impression that this is a watered-down version of history. And it’s not until the concluding scenes that the connections between Fellini’s film and Pasolini’s are clarified. The answer lies in theories surrounding who or what led to Pasolini’s violent death in 1975, initially believed to be an essentially random, but brutal, murder. Laing, like others, favours the theory that Pasolini’s murder was premeditated, a punishment for being both queer and openly communist, a reaction to Pasolini’s many articles condemning the Italian right and the institutions propping it up. Certainly there’s no doubt that Pasolini being both gay and vehemently anti-capitalist were used to justify his slaughter, on the grounds his outspokenness was a provocation. The reason for Pasolini’s death is still a matter of fierce debate but that ferocity doesn’t really come across in Laing’s treatment. There’s something too studied, too lifeless about their approach. Obviously it’s not that their narrative’s bowdlerized, but it can be curiously staid, there are laundry-list elements and scenes which felt far too prosaic given the territory. However, for those who know little about the period or the key players, this may well be a more fertile piece.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Hamish Hamilton for an ARC

Rating: 2.5

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He attacks modernity, he puts it on trial.He thinks consumerism is a new racism because there is so much violence hidden inside it , because it destroys nature and natural behaviour."

Having read and been mesmerised Olivia Laing's The Garden Against Time, it was time to read some of their fiction.

The Silver Book is a hypnotising story set in the world of Italian film-making of the 1970s.

Nicholas is escaping the tragedy of a relationship in London and heads to Italy: Venice- where he meets Danilo Donati- the leader and maestro of filmset design. Their relationship takes them into the worlds of the extraordinary film makers; Fellini ( the creation of Casanova) and Pasolini ( the film of Salò) - both considered masterpieces of their day; films that challenge the viewer even to this day.

Combining fiction with fact, Laing takes us into Nicholas' world as he navigates the film industry, the desires, whims and demands of the designer and directors and also tries to find peace within himself.

In some senses, this novel feels like an "Arthouse" film - the taut yet somehow languid prose; the beguiling imagery of everyday life among this unique group of people and the sometimes violent and provocative imagery that is being created within both films.

The contradictions, turmoil of emotions and consequences of the gay lifestyles of the lead protagonists in early/mid 1970s Italy add a definite sense of period.

Aa a book exploring the mindset of the directors and the abstract nature of imagery then this is certainly a powerful read. Olivia Laing has written a novel that will challenge, bewilder and capture equally- an author who creates intelligent fiction

This is a book that will divide readers but is certainly worth exploring - seductive and riveting and will certainly encourage reflection on the pyschological impact of the war upon filmmakers in the subsequent years.

[Ярослава · Rating 3 out of 5]

My heartfelt thanks to NetGalley & Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to love this book, but its narrative choices didn't work for me. Any summary almost inevitably makes it sound more urgent and vibrant than it actually felt for me: the story, such as it were, pivots around the murder of Pasolini right as he was finishing his film Salò, an almost surreally violent indictment of, ostensibly, the historical fascism in Italy, but also of the fascism that seemed to be on the rise in Pasolini's time, and, more broadly, of the inherently human temptations of violence and power which make the threat of undemocratic regimes and various horrors a constant companion of human history.

Because most readers are not familiar enough with Italian cinema (or politics) of that time, it makes sense to introduce a clueless and naive (and ultimately cruel in his naivety) narrator so that all the historical footnotes and explanations could be introduced organically. Hence, we get a young man fleeing England from (initially) unspecified troubles caused by his queerness, who catches the eye of the costume and production designer Danilo Donati, who worked with both Fellini and Pasolini at the time. What the English protagonist is doing on set, and what makes him so essential, aside from his looks and the absence of the gag reflex, is never persuasively laid out, but okay, whatever, let's assume he's just a narrative device and we don't need him to be a developed character. A handwavy statement that he's an artist--without describing his thoughts and beliefs about his art and craft, etc.--would suffice, m'kay? And it would have sufficed, if only his bland self and his relationship troubles didn't get way more screen time than Pasolini, or fascism, or a plot.

The novel felt to me like it was both too static and trying too hard while being heavier on #vibes and #aesthetics than on actual substance. The narrative unfolds through a procession of very short descriptive chapters, more like movie stills than scenes, or like very elaborate confections in shop windows. Was the book trying to recreate, in another medium, what it describes as Pasolini's idea of montage?

Pasolini explains something of his theory of the montage versus the long shot. The montage is subjectivity, provisionality; the long shot is objectivity, clarity, resolution. The montage is the disorder of life; the long shot is the clarity of death. Which is true though? Which best represents reality?

Could be, but it didn't work for me (it might work for you though!).

The style was probably aiming for incisive-yet-paradoxical or something, but this sort of whimsy didn't work for me either. Take, for example, this:

"He thinks of the boy going down on him, his mouth clumsy and skilful. It’s like finding a red setter puppy on the side of the road."

(a) are we supposed to trip up and pause to ponder whether clumsiness and skillfulness are not mutually exclusive?
(b) excuse me, what are you doing with the puppies that you find on the side of the road for you to associate it with a blowjob?
(c) does it matter that it's a red setter puppy? would the simile work any better or worse had it been a mutt, a bulldog or a great dane?

And the text is rife with stuff of this kind. There are also moments of beauty, like these two (from different chapters):

"He needs to measure their necks. A tailor’s job, though also that of a hangman."
*
"I always had a feeling hell would be so beautiful it would make you puke with fear."

(I mean, "so beautiful it would make you puke with fear" could also fall into the "trying too hard to be whimsical" category, but I can be sold on the idea of a beauty so inimical to humanity that it cannot but be rejected in this very physical manner.)

There's a lot to love in it thematically: whole essays' worth of dramatized juxtapositions between Fellini, who "is so bored he has set the whole Enlightenment on trial" with his Casanova, and Pasolini, who's also putting Enlightenment on trial, but as the progenitor of the atrocities of the 20th century. Or meditations on the falsities and illusions necessary to convey the sense of reality:

You can’t just film a bowl of cherries and expect them to look like cherries on the screen.

Okay, says Nicholas. How do you make snow?

Feathers. Rolled oats. Tissue paper. Marble dust.

But I'm not sure if it all added up to a coherent and urgent whole.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hidden truths beneath the avalanche of content

Under a system where people play to hide the truth.

Who pays the price of seeing truths? What is the price of speaking about these truths you are seeing?

Isn’t it better to remain unseeing – just keep heading towards the edge of the cliff whilst following clickbait and then marvelling at the view whilst you fall over the cliff edge.

Through the ‘innocent’ , unItalian eyes of Nicholas, Oliva Laing gives us three true life characters Danilo Donati – Frederico Fellini – Pier Paolo Pasolini. All of them living and working with images, creating them and bending them this way and that, giving us art, the food for thought.

Laing explores how we create images. Images which are the facade of what's inside but in media those images are what you see. But in media what’s outside is not inside, You, might imagine that you're seeing the sea but it's just a layer of plastic and with the correct light and camera angle it looks just like the sea. So, we have to keep our eyes open because what we see is just the outside and we have to look for clues as to what is inside. What is that particular medium trying to make us believe? Why does it want us to so believe? Who is gaining? Who is losing? With Pasolini’s murder who lost, was it Pasolini alone or also the rest of us?

[Trudie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This year, I am getting a film history course, one novel at a time. A few months ago, I read Kehlmann's exploration of the life of Austrian filmmaker G. W. Pabst, The Director. It turned out to be one of my standout novels of the year.
The Silver Book, while not quite the novel I had hoped for, still offers a fascinating journey into the world of mid-1970s Italian cinema. Olivia Laing has captured the mood of Rome and Venice perfectly, as seen through the eyes of Nicholas, a slightly mysterious youth who stumbles into a job and a relationship with set designer Danilo Donati. Some of the scenes in this book are stunning, inspired by Donati's work for Fellini's Casanova ( 1976 ). Like The Director, this novel also touches on filmmaking and Fascism, with a sometimes uncomfortably detailed description of the making of Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom - a highly controversial film, widely banned at the time. It is fascinating to read about the technical aspects of making such a shocking film, but I can't look at chocolate and marmalade in quite the same way again.
I know this is also a book about longing and beauty but the ugliness of Salò and the story of Pasolini cast quite a pall over the second half of the book and unfortunately by the end I was quite happy to be done with it.

[Kobe · Rating 3 out of 5]

i have to admit, i'm not at all familiar with the characters and story of 1970s italian cinema that rest at the heart of this novel, nor have i seen either of the movies that are being created. therefore, i was going in with completely fresh - and somewhat naive, like our main character nico - eyes.

and what a world that was crafted here! so richly imagined. i adored the structure of vignettes showing the creation of these movies - cast and crew mingling in their everyday lives. the passion these characters had for their art was so admirable - from the commitment to using original techniques to make costumes with such meticulous detail, to the directorial fixation on getting the *perfect* take - and it spoke entirely to the pursuit of creating art and bringing a vision to life. the beautiful prose, with all its wonderful descriptions, really brought this world to life.

the politics of this book, and the darker undertones here, were subtle at times, intense in others, particularly as we flit between the romance and the violent subject matter of the movies they were making. art is political - and we really get to see how pasolini, the visionary director who saw firsthand the devastating impact of fascism, was determined to represent and reflect that in his art. there were passages that struck me where the actors would be impossible to distinguish from the characters they were playing, engaging in violence and hedonism and depravity. like how the book itself intertwines fact and fiction, these passages serve as a provocative blend of reality and art. just how much are these sets, these stories, these characters illusion, and how much is extracting directly from history?

queerness, too, is explored well here. if the book itself is a metaphorical film set, a bubble where reality can be suspended to create art in such controlled conditions, queerness is not necessarily taboo. outside these conditions, though, we see the struggle of being queer in the 1970s pressing in on the outskirts, lingering just beyond the set in a way that cannot be avoided. but these filming processes can't last forever - and it'll be there, waiting, when they venture beyond its confines.

where this novel fell down for me slightly was actually in the characters themselves, who felt a bit flat in the vibrant and lively world that laing has so carefully crafted. the book was somewhat caught between the non-fiction of 1970s italian cinema and the fictional story of nico and dani's relationship that's woven into reality. flashes of brilliance were dimmed slightly when we returned to them, and i don't think i was ever quite convinced by their need and desire to cling to each other, nor did i fully buy into the feelings they might have shared.

a very intriguing story but not 100% captivating. it has made me want to watch these movies, though, and learn more about this time period - which happens to reflect what i enjoyed most about this book!

3.5 stars.

[Dona's Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐⭐⭐.5

Stanley Kubrick  meets THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO.

Pre-Read Notes:

This was an undeniable title and cover combo for me. The opening third felt incomprehensible to me but I've been able to relax into it. It's a wild book though!

"Eating, sleeping, working, every action contaminated by this presence from the past. Is this what haunting feels like, someone at the corner of your vision every moment of the day?" p51

Final Review

(thoughts & recs) Could be surreal, could be over-styled, who can tell? It is so, so weird and just not for me. I really didn't like this one, sadly. However, I can see the brilliance. If you love filmmaking and artistic films, this could be a good choice for you!

My Favorite Things:

✔️ The descriptive writing is genius: "There’s a delicious sense of autumn in the air, like hitting a cool patch when swimming." p10

✔️ "I hate mountains, he says. ... I always feel like they’re ganging up on me." p70 Everything in this book, every sentence is a little off kilter. It's so uncanny.

Content Notes: open door sex scenes -- there are many descriptions of the filming of sex scenes for a movie, so it's this wild, artistic, performative view of sex. Not smutty but definitely vulnerable.

Thank you to Olivia Liang, Ferrar, Strauss, and Giroux, and NetGalley for an accessible digital copy of THE SILVER BOOK. All views are mine.

[None Ofyourbusiness Loves Israel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nicholas is a man so drenched in self reflection that he is basically a walking puddle. He is drifting through Europe with the determination of someone who wants to feel important but keeps tripping over his own mystique. His life becomes a collage of art talk, guilt, ambition, confused desire, and obsessive soul searching. That road, like all roads, leads him to Italy.

Orbiting him is Dani, who functions as both conscience and chaos agent. Dani is the person you meet once in life who shows up with a backpack full of ideas and a complete disregard for your emotions. Nicholas treats Dani like a sign from the universe.

Then there is Danilo, a figure who slides into the narrative and makes you wonder whether you should hydrate before continuing. He pulls Nicholas into a creative project that leaks smoke, memory, myth, and straight up film studies energy. The book name drops Pasolini, Fellini, Casanova, and various cinematic ghosts with such enthusiasm that you could power a small city on the references alone.

The story grows more theatrical as Nicholas becomes entangled in a reconstruction of a legendary film that never quite existed in the way anyone claims. Reality blurs with performance. Art consumes life. Life tries to file a complaint. Nicholas keeps trying to locate purpose through the artistic hurricane swirling around him. Everyone else seems to be improvising.

Throughout the book, Laing threads questions about creation, longing, obsession, and the slippery tricks memory plays when it wants to keep you up at night. Characters collide through tension, affection, loyalty, and the occasional intellectual stunt. Power shifts. Motives tangle. Ideals wobble under pressure. It is a story saturated with yearning and spectacle, mixed with anxiety over what art can salvage from a life that keeps refusing to behave.

The book uses Pasolini partly as atmosphere and partly as a thematic compass. It does not treat his murder as a cold case to solve. It treats it as a cultural wound, a symbol, a shadow cast across the creative world that Nicholas wanders through. The references clarify the kind of artistic universe he is trying to join.

Pasolini becomes a figure who represents danger, genius, queer visibility, and the price of refusing to make life smaller for the comfort of others. The murder sits in the background with purpose, although the novel is not a documentary and never tries to reenact or decode the event.

As for Italian cinema, the book captures the spirit more than the ticker tape. It conveys the texture: the clashes of vision, the politics underneath the glamour, the obsessive idealism that makes artists unbearable and unforgettable at the same time. It reflects the era with tonal accuracy rather than with a historian's checklist. Laing leans into the emotional truth of that cinematic period, the way it blended art, revolt, sexuality, and self immolation. The book gets that part right, even when it embellishes.

What it says about Italy at that time is that it was a country running on friction. Culture was combusting in public. Power was shifting. New voices were wrestling old regimes. The book understands the tension between invention and instability. It lets the political climate bleed into the artistic one, which mirrors how that era actually felt.

The book shows desire as something that shapes ambition and loneliness at the same time. It suggests how queer identity has always intertwined with artistic risk, secrecy, community, and vulnerability. There is no preaching in it. Instead, it treats sexuality the way it treats creativity: as something that can liberate you or wreck you depending on where you stand.

Parts of it shine. Parts of it wander. That is part of its charm and part of its exhaustion. The book behaves like someone holding a feast and then serving cucumber water.

The novel raises its hand, lists every intoxicating theme in twentieth century art and politics, and then treats them all like decorative props. Italian cinema, queer history, radical politics, the cultural earthquakes of the era, Pasolini himself, all of it becomes scenic wallpaper for Nicholas's personal haze. It is like watching someone stand in the middle of a cathedral and talk only about the acoustics of their own voice.

The book clearly knows the themes are fascinating. It nods at each one. It circles them. It admires them. Then it backs away the moment it could actually dive in. You keep waiting for the rich material to erupt, but instead it arrives pre diluted. You can feel the outline of a sharper, bolder novel hiding under the surface, tapping on the glass, wondering why it was not invited. And that is the real loss. The novel could have been volcanic.

[nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Major thanks to NetGalley and FSG for sending me an ARC of this in exchange for my honest thoughts:

*3.5 rounded up

“𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵, 𝘗𝘢𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘪 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘺. 𝘐𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵. 𝘋𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘭𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘦. 𝘏𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘚𝘢𝘭ò 𝘪𝘴𝘯’𝘵 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳. 𝘏𝘦 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘺 𝘪𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯. 𝘍𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘪𝘴𝘮 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘸𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺, 𝘪𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮, 𝘸𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥, 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘢𝘺𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵."

in which Laing does bl historical fiction surrounding Fellini and Pasolini. What’s not to like?

for gay film bros, mostly

[emily]

‘It suits him, working in such a provisional atmosphere, among people who are for the most part the antithesis of dreamy—the radio is always on, and they bicker about football and deride Bowie when 'Rebel Rebel' is played—He stands with one hand on his hip, totally unselfconscious—Stop work, he says, and get some eggs. I'm making carbonara.’

Leaving this ‘unrated’ because (subjectively I think it’s a three, but otherwise it should be a five) it’s not quite the book for me, but I can certainly appreciate how well written, well structured the entire text is. I just didn’t feel enough for the topic/subject in focus/at the core of the narrative, but I think another reader (including a particular friend in mind) would absolutely love and enjoy Laing’s latest work about Pasolini. Perhaps it having to do with (my ‘lukewarm’ sentiments about) Pasolini — is the main/root problem for me. A while back, I acquired a few copies of Pasolini’s work in translation published by NYRB — notably Theorem and Boys Alive— but have only browsed, never finished any (though not a ‘negative’ sentiment/act at all, as Borges had said that ‘browsing’ can sometimes be a more pleasurable form of ‘reading’ — and what he missed most after losing his ‘sight’). Another thought perhaps is that — I’m not enough of a ‘cinephile’ to properly appreciate his work (and also this one by Laing)?

‘Not everybody likes it. Two people have refused his costumes: Elizabeth Taylor and Callas herself. Both wanted to be flattered, both insisted on bringing in their own personal designer. The result is that Callas in Pasolini's Medea could be onstage at La Scala, and Taylor, who Danilo did not like, looks in The Taming of the Shrew as if she's going to the prom. Pure vanity. Pure Hollywood. For Callas he has more sympathy. The vanity of a professional mixed with the vulnerability of a great artist. She had just been dropped by Onassis, her voice was going, she'd never acted on camera before, she was clinging on to dignity with her fingernails. In that state, it's not easy to relinquish control.’

‘The version he has made isn't good enough, it is insufficiently beautiful. He understands what they are doing now. His job is to produce the seductions, and Fellini's job is to tear them down. The more formidable they are, the better the film.’

I had (previously) thought that I would be thrilled or rather mildly excited about reading anything about or by Pasolini because simply judging from the views/words by well-known/published writers and alike — I had an (inaccurate, in hindsight) idea of him as a sort of ‘Caravaggio’ figure. Maybe that’s just me over-generalising and over-assuming — clumping two Italian ‘artists’ together. Not maybe, but definitely a silly mistake on my part. But what I dare assume though is that Pasolini is quite a polarising figure — not only because of his films but because of his ‘intellectual’ and social commentaries — which he was quite open about I believe. While I find his play on ‘realism’, poetic stylisation, critique of societal issues and power structures — with an extension towards also a mixed clutter of ‘taboo’ and ‘sensitive’ subjects sort of interesting, I don’t find it ‘moving’ — I’m just not the target audience, I suppose. I applaud his experimentalism and tenacity (both in the ways he went about his ‘life’ and with regards to his ‘art’ / films), etc. — and I acknowledge its provocative tones — admire them even, but ultimately I am left more or less uninspired and unmoved. With that ‘said’, I’m still glad about this — ‘reintroduction’ to Pasolini and his work through Laing’s brilliant mind and work.

‘This mood is leaking into Casanova, he can't help it. Everything disgusting, nothing redeemed. To fuck is to conquer, what a terrible thing to think. And yet a part of him recognises the ubiquity of the charge. Once, years ago, Pasolini confided in him a dream he'd had—that made him realise the phrase has stuck—what my ambiguous love of liberty was against. What is his ambiguous love of liberty against? Boredom, convention, stasis.’

‘They light the fire—Pasolini explains something of his theory of the montage versus the long shot. The montage is subjectivity, provisionality; the long shot is objectivity, clarity, resolution. The montage is the disorder of life; the long shot is the clarity of death. Which is true though? Which best represents reality? Nicholas is not quite sober. The lack of sleep has removed some of his defences, his capacity to withstand alcohol. He looks at their two bodies, reflected back and forth, back and forth, in the double mirrors. I once lived in a mirrored room, he says.’

Even though I fail to connect Caravaggio to Pasolini (even though I selfishly want to — for I think the ‘consolidation’ of that (too romantic) ‘thought’ would allow me to appreciate Pasolini better/more) , or rather be convinced of their ‘likeness’, Laing’s narrative — I believe, was able to carry well and convincingly the beauty and concept of ‘chiaroscuro’. Underneath all the chaos, noise, etc., the narrative to me felt like it is about finding or rather stumbling into light in the darkest times. Overall, the narrative seems less like a simple melancholic contemplation that (sometimes, nauseatingly) reeks of self-indulgence, it veers closer to an act of (complex, and/but) mostly quiet defiance — a testament to the human spirit's capacity for survival and meaning-making even in the most fragmented period/times.

‘—Continuing to associate with Rome’s underclass, Pasolini’s own existence was also necessarily precarious. On the night of November 2, 1975, at the age of fifty-three, he was murdered on the beach at Ostia, a place he describes in Ragazzi di vita and where he regularly went for sex. The murderer was never identified and the motive remains obscure. But turning back to his first novel one is bound to notice just how many deaths there are in its pages, how much collateral damage around this thirst for intensity, as if life were hardly life without the risk of death. And then how little pathos accrues to the unlucky victims, how little reward or credit is afforded to anyone who seeks to save another human being. At the end of Una vita violenta the wayward delinquent hero, recovering from TB, dives into the turbulent waters of a flooded building site to rescue a drowning girl, and as a result dies himself. At the end of Ragazzi di vita, called on to play the hero and save a younger boy, Riccetto reflects that “to dive in the river under the bridge was tantamount to saying you were tired of life, no one could survive it.” “I love you, Riccetto, you know!” the young man assures himself a moment later, in one of the very rare occasions when the author allows his character a moment of introspection. It is in this sense that Pasolini is indeed a moral writer: the world and experience are presented in such an uncompromising and disturbing way as to force the disoriented reader to reexamine the values underpinning his or her own life.’ — from the ‘Introduction’ (by the translator, Tim Parks), Boys Alive (Passolini)

‘It is not generally defensible (or productive or interesting) to pay much attention to the biographies of writers and artists when analysing and interpreting their work, and yet with Pasolini, one feels called to make an exception to this ordinarily salutary caution. Pasolini’s poetry, fiction, essays, and films were, after all, only part of his creative project; the self that he crafted over the course of his fifty-four years was also part of that lifelong endeavour to intervene in the culture of his moment. Enigmatic, contradictory, Pasolini was the son of a father who embraced fascism and a mother who rejected it; the brother of Guido Pasolini, a resistance fighter who was killed in the Porzûs Massacre and whom Pier Paolo mourned as a martyr. Pier Paolo was a sometime communist, an anticlerical Catholic, an unapologetic homosexual whose tastes ran to passing encounters with young urban hustlers (i ragazzi di vita – boys in the life). He was educated in the Latin and Greek classics and, in a singularly Pasolinian gesture, at one point had his cousin, Nico Naldini, sell his painstakingly accumulated collection of Teubner editions of the classics, along with the Laterza editions of the Italian literary canon, in order to obtain money to support his sexual habits once he moved to Rome. He was a powerful advocate for local dialects, which he believed were a bulwark against the deadening massification of society. He was taken to court dozens of times, accused of blasphemy, pornography, insulting to the national religion, and corrupting minors. He was a poet, a critic, a filmmaker, and a partisan for radical freedom (for men, at least – his stance toward women’s sexual freedom was, to say the least, at times perversely reactionary). He was the friend of the most important Italian writers of his day – Carlo Emilio Gadda, Cesare Pavese, Alberto Moravia, Elsa Morante, Italo Calvino and Attilio Bertolucci, among others.’ — from ‘Introduction, Translating Pasolini Translating Paul’ by Castelli (translator of Saint Paul: A Screenplay by Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Before ‘The Silver Book’ by Laing that is so focused on the life (and death) of Pasolini, I’ve only ever browsed with intent (and without) Laing’s work — either in an art museum/gallery gift shop (notably Crudo with one of Wolfgang Tillmans’ pieces on the cover, hard to forget), a generous ‘ARC’ or more (notably The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise, which I intend to finish at a later date), or from a friend’s recommendation.

‘Sourness has crept on to the set. Summer sourness, like spoiled milk. Fellini's secretary has her car stolen. She replaces it and that car is stolen too. His driver Ludo has to have an operation, which means the necessary calmness of his morning commute is contaminated by the presence of a stranger. The drive to Cinecittà has always been Fellini's best time to think and talk, to turn over the problems of the film, and without it he is on an even shorter fuse.’

‘—buds on the wisteria that he hasn't noticed before, fat brown buds glazed with purple—Nothing has ever been so soothing to him as drawing, nothing has ever been so effective a way of dissolving his own personality, vaporizing the contents of his head. He is no longer a person dragged by time—The earth is steaming. He can smell rotting figs, the occasional sweetness of pear blossom, hear the clatter of Pasolini's typewriter from an upstairs room. The sky, for the first time, is blue, not white, not grey. He breathes low in his chest, his blood travels through his body. At work, he is a calm animal. It’s the absence of sun that rouses him. The house is no longer a house complicated by light.’

I was first introduced to Laing's writing by a friend — The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone (a favourite of hers by Laing, I believe) some years ago (but with a bit of shame, confessedly I’ve still not read it). I often lean, or rather vacillate extremely when it comes to book recommendations. This one in particular I value greatly and hold onto gratefully. Simply said — I truly want to read it — more because reading it would make me think of ‘said’ friend and her affection — sweet intent and lovely gesture of recommending it at the right time. It’s such a well considered and thoroughly felt recommendation (not because it was a ‘popular’ book at the time, or because of more ‘selfish’ reasons). It was brought up not at random, but it was after I asked her to cancel a birthday ‘party’ / dinner that she had so kindly arranged for me. It happened some years ago now, but I remember it very well because we had such a lovely and sort of ‘ordinary’ (but the best kind of ‘ordinary’) evening (of just walking around the city and then going to a restaurant that I have been before and had a good time there before — so was able to keep all ‘surprises’ to a minimum) instead of the ‘cancelled’ thing (which I would have still appreciated but just wasn’t feeling it).

Anyway, she had brought up ‘Laing’s’ book in conversation after my desperate attempt to untangle, disentangle, and/or explore some past feelings (by rambling, of course, fair to say without enough/much 'coherence') — about being super ‘social’ and (for the lack of a better word) ‘extroverted’ — plateau-ing into an almost — unfeeling, desensitised loop of experience(s) (a bit in jest this, but perhaps that’s the vibe Solvej Balle was going for in their series ‘Om udregning af rumfang’ / ‘On The Calculation of Volume’? But far more intelligently poeticised and meticulously penned into intensely beautiful prose?) — a sort of out-of-body experience — like another hypothetical ‘me’ judging the ‘real’ / corporeal ‘me’ and being like ‘what the fuck is this’ — am ‘I’ truly, truly enjoying the company of these people and these activities or is this all just sort of ‘performative’ and submitting into an idea of what society markets as a palpable proof of joy/happiness?

'Time stopped, or rather swept me up with it. In my twenties, I’d read a list of rules for being, and was so impressed that I copied them into my little black notebook, which in those days was full of aphorisms and advice about how to be a person. The rule I liked best stated that it is always worth making a garden, no matter how temporary your stay. Perhaps they wouldn’t last, but wasn’t it better to go on like Johnny Appleseed, leaving draughts of pollen in your wake? Each of these gardens was a way of making myself at home—Love aside, it was the most consistent and consuming of all my desires, and as it happened the one thing brought the other into my life—We’d become friends in the first place because of our shared interest in gardening—we began to talk about moving somewhere with the potential to restore a garden, or make one from scratch. It wasn’t clear how long we’d have together, and creating a garden felt like the right way to spend at least some of that time.' — from The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise

But (if it isn't obvious enough) to clarify, this is not to advocate or imply that (for the lack of a better word) 'introversion' is the better option, but to open up and play with a third thing—to prioritise connections and relationships with strong(er) intent and (badly phrased, but) similar vibes, etc.—being on the same mental and emotional wavelengths and all that. Otherwise it could often feel like just going with the ‘flow’ (in general), or perhaps just generating/submitting to a ton of these ‘moments’ to block out what one really, really want? All of these sounded pretentious then, and surely it is (still) not any less pretentious now (in hindsight, fuzzy reflections). But is there a ‘better’ way to articulate this? Perhaps, but I don’t have it in me to express those very ‘human’ feelings ‘better’ / with less ‘cringe’. In any case, (at the time) she thought some Laing would do me some good after the 'said' ramblings — and though I still haven’t read the text recommended, I trust and cherish her sentiments irrevocably and without any sliver of doubt.

‘What is the truth, the journalist asks. That we want to own everything at any price, Pasolini says. He says: I think that, in one way or the other, we are all weak because we are all victims. And we are all guilty—because we are all ready to play at slaughtering each other, as long as we are able to own everything at the end of the slaughter. He describes the alternative. The world will become a larger place.’

With all considered (personal and impersonal), I do consider myself a strong and willing proponent of Laing / Laing’s work. A rough deduction of this I reckon is that — Laing is superb, so brilliant at exploring (and putting into words) the almost suffocating feeling of complicated ‘discomfort’ and (for the lack of a better word) ‘loneliness’ in a crowd, instead of the kind of conventional/simple ‘loneliness’ that is rooted in the lack of company/crowd. To tie that altogether with ‘The Silver Book’ (which at its core I believe is brimming with philosophical inquiries, criticism and such — of the past that also mirrors the present) — Laing, in her writing or rather through her writing, encourages readers to look closer, to feel more deeply, and to find the luminescence in the ordinary, the shimmering reflections that reveal the extraordinary. A gentle invitation to reflect on the world and our place within its shifting, silvery light (regardless of whether it’s through her personal ‘memoir’ writing, or her incandescent rendition/fictionalised narrative of Pasolini’s life (and death)).

‘Come and eat a doughnut in the sun. They sit—leaning their backs against the wall—I don't like doughnuts, she says. What I really want is an apple.’

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

Nicholas is a young artist, escaping from tragedy at home in England. While drawing in Venice he is chosen by Danilo (Donati) to be Danilo's apprentice at Cinecittà whilst making Fellini's Casanova.

Nicholas becomes enmeshed in the life of the cinema just as much as he is entangled with Danilo. All the time he is working harder and harder with Danilo he is trying to come to terms with a disastrous love affair in England.

The Silver Book is like nothing ever read before. It has a wonderful ethereal, cinematic feel to it as the processes Fellini and later Pasolini employ to get the film they want - Fellini's abuse of his star, Donald Sutherland and Pasolini's "use" of the boy extras he employs on Salò. You almost don't know whether you are in a scene or "real life".

Nicholas is a wonderful character and after I'd read the novel I did a little Googling and was amazed how many and the huge variety of films that Donati worked on. It was quite illuminating. I'm not sure I would like to watch Salò but I will definitely look for the Casanova.

Definitely recommended whether you are a cinema buff or not. Olivia Laing has produced a wonderful dream-like novel that is well worth the read.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux for the advance review copy.

[Emmeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

The manufacture of a shirt, like the manufacture of a film, involves illusion and splendid reversals. Also seams.

This was such a good read. It reminded me a lot of what I used to read as a kid, which is generally different from what I read now. Back then I read a lot of historical novels; in fact, so much of my knowledge of history started with novels, and if they captured my imagination I would go and learn more about the topic. This has resulted in a pretty patchy historical record, but many very vivid images.

This is a novel about the making of Fellini’s Casnova and Pasolini’s Salò. I watched Casnova while reading and… well, that was a very decadent film. And I watched a lot of Pasolini last year, and read his novel Theorem, though I avoided the brutal and disgusting Salò. It’s not necessary to see either to read the book, though it did add to my enjoyment of Fellini’s film, having learned so much about the making of the costumes and sets.

I tend to dislike novels with real people as characters (and most recently abandoned the acclaimed The Director on account of this), but Olivia Laing does a skillful job here: part ventriloquism, part invention, and part handing most interiority over to a fictional character who observes the others. It perhaps helped that Danilo Donato, costume designer on the two films, is not so famous that I already knew everything about him (unlike, say, Pasolini himself, who is viewed at more of a remove).

Here’s Laing’s protagonist Nicholas on Pasolini:

You’d know he was queer, but he certainly isn’t proclaiming it in any sort of decorative way. The tone is man to man, unadulterated masculinity, a stance so rigorously produced it feels somehow bogus, especially compared to Dani’s easy, unfussy camp.

And here her characters discuss the costumes for Salò:

They have been talking about clothes, about the need to convey the wealthy, stultifying world out of which fascism arose: its demure, subdued young; its vicious elders, avid for power. Clothes of dominance, clothes of submission, Dani says, doodling as he easts. School suits. Communion dresses. Grey and white, I think. Or cream?

This is a historical novel exploring an Italy not just of movies and ego and personalities, but also of a war not-long-past, whose characters still remember living under occupation, and whose perpetrators have largely gotten away with their involvement. Pasolini, uncompromising and brutal in his depictions of wealth and power, is a thorn in their side. The book ends with his famous murder, and this along with the filming of Salò gives it something of a tragic cast.

But it also has a comic side: Casanova is a ridiculous movie, Fellini seems a ridiculous man and the costumes… they are the most ridiculous of all. I highlighted lots of passages in this book and many, many of them were about clothes:

He watches Hélène Surgère zip herself up and come sweeping back into the room. White satin, huge skirt, sleeves like water wings, embellished with black rosettes, vaguely arachnoid, vaguely floral. Evil flowers, he calls it to himself: a dress that epitomizes the fascist stance. Pure surface, absolute dominance, the absence of a heart.

Brown and white stripe, a dark blue check. He flicks professionally through swatches of cotton, holding samples up against Nicholas’s cheek. Emerald-green dressing gown. Lilac check pyjamas, and then anther pair striped red and pink.

The bartenders are Walter and Roberto, as usual, only both are wearing papier-mâché fish heads, painted silver. They look absurd, they look fantastic, sticking up like pilchards in a stargazy pie.

It’s also a love story between two men that I found understated but believable and affecting. Italy, in this context, was painted in both broad strokes and with more nuance… in general the depiction of Italy felt very lived in. Here’s Nicholas on his Italian lover’s family:

He can’t understand how Dani’s mother, passionately devout, rabidly homophobic, can nonetheless accepts and adore her artistic son, flirt with Nicholas, pat him knowingly on the cheek, while his own parents, rational Oxford atheists, discarded him from their lives

There are reflections on beauty, on film, on hustler boys, on the historical past. Occasionally all the research shows through a little creakily, or a parallel to the modern world is overforced, or a word felt a little modern or misplaced, but overall, this was a nuanced and expansive book, and also an entertaining one, written with real passion and skill.

Uberto looks at Pasolini. I don’t think I should say that. As a writer. I don’t think it looks good to misquote Baudelaire. My friend, Pasolini says, we are demonstrating that facts are immaterial in fascism, that truth is dead, that meaning is on a permanent migration. I think we are engaged in honourable work. Will you set aside your reputation for the cause?

[Ruben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Neither Fellini's Casanova nor Pasolini's Salò are movies to watch for pleasure. One is grotesque, the other disturbing, but both are provocative in the way they present uncomfortable truths.

This short novel connects the two in an intriguing way, through the eyes of a young British draftsman who gets picked off the street by Danilo Donati, famous costume designer for both movies.

The two famous directors remain somewhat distant and mysterious throughout, the book is not explicit about what they try to do.

Although Danilo is an optimistic character, the novel itself also feels distant and ultimately left me kind of cold.

On the other hand, you get a good sense of the incredible creativity of filmmaking in 1970s Cinecittà.

I read somewhere that Olivia Laing sees this work as part spy thriller - that is certainly not how I would describe it, but there is an interesting intrigue, especially when you know how things will inevitably end.

3,5

[Nailya · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is no secret that I adore Olivia Laing' writing. I appreciate their talent to weave together different stories and entertain, educate and enflame in their exquisite non-fiction prose. I was hesitant to read a novel by them, as I was not sure if what I appreciate about their writing would translate well into the world of narrative structure and character development. Having read The Silver Book, my only question is: why couldn't this be a Laing non-fiction book?

It has all the ingredients of an excellent Laing text - evocative atmosphere of the world of 1970s Italian cinema, problematic gay men doing problematic things, uncompromising political clash of the left and fascism rearing its ugly head. The book is at its very best when Laing goes on some sort of a short tangent about Elizabeth Taylor or Maria Callas or one of the myriad iconic mid-20th century personalities who were somehow connected to the core story of the making of Salo, Pier Paolo Pasolini's controversial version of the Marquis De Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. The story of Pasolini, Danilo Donati (Italy's visionary film costume designer), the memory of Salo (the Italian puppet state created by the Germans for Mussolini when he was ousted from power in Italy proper) and the explosive politics of 1970s Italy is ripe for a classic Laing treatment.

What killed it? Having to pack all these things into the format of a fictional novel with fictional characters and character arcs. Although most people in the narrative are real, we follow a dreary gay love story of Donati and a young Englishman called Nicolas, who gets entangled in the world of Pasolini, Fellini and the broader Italian cinema scene of the 1970s. Both Nicholas and Donati are flat and uninteresting characters, but as Nicholas is the point of view third person narrator, we are forced to spend the entire runtime of the book seeing things from his (boring) perspective, leaving very little space for Laing's free-flowing generosity of tangential details. Whatever they are trying to talk about, we are ultimately yanked back to Nicholas and his uninspiring and unoriginal personal struggles which we've seen in every low-effort gay drama ever. He is such a colourless and dull character that I found myself skipping some of the text in a vain attempt to entertain myself reading this book. Such a shame, the topic is fascinating, but the specific story Laing chose to tell is not.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

⇝ 4.5 stars

[Teleseparatist · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC courtesy of NetGalley.

A work of beautifully written, utterly queer historical fiction that is both kind to its heroes and heartbreaking to the reader. It's the first time I've read anything by Laing, but I'll need to check out more of their work. Laing draws the time and place beautifully, and brings forth complex characters. The perspective is both intimate and a little withdrawn - there is a kind of tenderness to it that I really appreciated.

I don't know that I'll ever bring myself to check out Salo - I'm not that strong of constitution - but I feel like I appreciate Italian cinema a lot more now.

My two only complaints would be that I didn't want the story to end when it did - but I get why that was Laing's choice, and it absolutely works - and that I wanted there to be ten, fifteen pages of extra material at the end to give more detail to Laing's research - but I'm always that way with historical fiction, and ymmv. A lot of people probably skip that part.

Really good prose, really funny, really sad, really sexy, and ultimately, very very kind to its subjects.

[Sam Cheng · Rating 2 out of 5]

Laing dramatizes the production and filming of Fellini’s Casanova (1976) and Salò (1975) in The Silver Book through the narration of Nicholas and Danilo Donati. The twenty-two-year-old from London gets propelled into the forty-nine-year-old’s stratosphere, the spectacular space of big-time cinema. Nico witnesses and learns from the renowned set and costume designer as the two live together in Rome. Where he can, Nico supports the films’ production and Dani’s decorative ventures.

For me, the book’s strength is Laing directing my attention to Italian politics in the 70s. However, I found the sensational setting of cinematic art, told through an episodic structure that, perhaps, matched in theory but was unsatisfying in The Silver Book. Similarly, the quick-paced flashes of highlights to represent the gruelling, behind-the-scenes labor also complements the magic of Hollywood. But this produced an atmosphere of plentitude that simultaneously felt vacuous. For example, both Nico and Dani, by and large, felt like characters in a novel with assigned roles. Even Dani’s (perhaps debatable) mercurial temperament when he got stuck in his head about Nico’s age and nervy, neurotic behavior didn’t seem believably written.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC.

[Benedict Ness 📚 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic. Reminded me of Charlie Porter’s ease and flair with language.

The book isn’t trying to be anything, it just is itself, and that self is really good.

Creates a world that you want to be in and maintains a delicate, delicious tension throughout.

You don’t learn much about the central characters, but I don’t think that’s what matters. I was very quickly invested because of plot’s pace and the style of the language and setting. The movement of someone running away from a place and unexpectedly entwining in another keeps one going throughout.

Getting my proof signed tomorrow, will be starstruck.

[Hannah Jung · Rating 5 out of 5]

This utterly and completely drew me into the world of Italian cinema of the 1970s. Main character Nicholas flees his life in London, travelling to Venice where he meets costume and set-designer Danilo Donati. Donati is working on two movies - Casanova and Salò - and we see the genius of the two directors Pasolini and Fellini at work.

This was so beautifully written, and balances the darker and lighter sides of art, love, pain, sexuality and loss. The subversive nature of the films contrasts with the more heartfelt love story of Nicholas and Danilo.

I’d recommend watching some clips of the very strange movie Casanova online to emphasise how unsettling and dream-like the whole story is. Donald Sutherland as Casanova also made an unexpectedly interesting extra character in the book!

It was overall a sad, intense, but really captivating read.

[Eliza Pillsbury]

i fought for this arc god bless fsg

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Who killed Pasolini? I will tell you. Everyone.” Some of us waited seven years for Olivia Laing to write another novel, having falling in love with Crudo; we have been richly rewarded with their second novel, The Silver Book, an unexpected noirish thriller set in the real world of 1970s Italian cinema amidst the shadow of allegedly-vanquished fascism. Famed film director Pier Paolo Pasolini questions this vanquishing while making his final film *Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom*; he will be brutally murdered before it is released, not long after some reels from the film are stolen. Though the theft of the reels may be a coincidence, a red herring, Laing’s novel is in some ways a supposition: how might they be connected? The result is a horribly gripping ride, mediated through Nicholas, fleeing a mysterious misdeed in London, who is taken in by costume designer Danilo, working on Pasolini’s *Salò* as well as Fellini’s *Casanova*. Through Nicholas, Laing reflects beautifully, furiously, on queerness and isolation: “It's their common currency, their shared lot, to carry around the burden of other people’s hatred. It’s part of the camaraderie between them, unspoken, unbreakable. 1975, Nicholas says now. People can walk on the moon and I can’t kiss you in the street in daylight. My parents killed me and ever since then I’ve been sort of dead.” Its considerations of sex and love are also haunting: “What is sex really but the desire to ram yourself into someone else’s interior, to make them a part of you.” But through the whole narrative is threaded the thing I’ve been most hungry to read lately: a convincing and cognisant appraisal of what it means to witness the threat of fascism in a world that doesn’t want to see it. “What he sees is how we all turn a blind eye to evil because we are comfortable and we want to stay that way. We are sleepwalkers like the children in *Salò* are sleepwalkers.” This is a timely novel that evokes Pasolini perfectly: “I go down to hell and I discover things that do not bother other people. But be careful. Hell is rising and it's coming at you.”

[Eleanor]

Laing's first novel, Crudo, felt too shackled to its own moment for me to like it unreservedly or to feel that it would stand the test of time. The Silver Book is a more interesting project. It's a short novel that follows the making of both Pasolini's film Salò and Fellini's film Casanova through the eyes of Nicholas, a young English gay man who comes to Italy in flight from trauma and guilt, and becomes involved with Danilo Donati, who designed the sets and costumes for both films. I know nothing about movies and have never seen either of these two, although I am aware of Salò's reputation: it's an adaptation of de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom that allegorises the brutality of fascism, and sounds like it is unbelievably gross and nauseating to watch. Laing creates tension by putting Nicholas's naive perspective (and a little bit of Dani's more worldly one) against what we know of history, including Pasolini's brutal unsolved murder at the age of forty-five and the rumours that he was attempting to buy back film reels stolen from his warehouse. The Silver Book is, I think, ultimately a novel about the simultaneous hiding and revealing of queer life that some mid-century art scenes facilitated, and also about the warping effects of power. I'm not sure that it entirely succeeds. Laing insistently skims the surface of events in a way that is obviously a deliberate choice (Nicholas must remain naive right to the end, after all), but that forecloses their ability to dig deeper into the dynamics that we glimpse between individuals and institutions. I really liked it, though. It's extremely evocative—there are some amazing scenes in the workshop when they're building surreal objects for Casanova, in particular, like a giant whale that you can walk around inside—the dialogue is good, and there's some excellent food writing. I'm pleased to see their fiction developing in this way. Source: NetGalley. Publishing 6 Nov. 2025.

[Adam]

The pacing makes it a quick book, perhaps there's differing ways of approaching reading, if you've no previous interest in Pasolini or Felini it'll be a different read if you have. Maybe this will be the spur to delve further. For me it's making want to track Pasolini's last interview, with this in mind I felt I was always looking over the characters shoulders, waiting for further insight, which came in the episode of the missing reels. If you've an interest in Cinecitta and the directors mentioned this might not add a lot more to what you already know. The characters themselves, I'm not sure, their specific dramas in a way felt dwarfed by what was unfolding around them. An interesting paced novel/read.

[Julie]

Olivia Laing came to my attention from the 'wide-ranging chat' she had with Claire Armitstead published in The Nerve. One of the topics they discussed was this new book. A great review from a friend here on GR also convinced me to place it on my list.

[Noreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this novel, but of course I would. I’ve read and very much liked almost all of Laing’s books and this one hits all my boxes: Fellini, Pasolini, Cinecittà, Rome, Venice, the making of Salò . . . So interesting and so well written.

[Jasmina · Rating 5 out of 5]

like most other things, one direction said this best too - I love I love I love, Olivia.

like fic (this is a compliment) but more fleshed out, the research behind it as solid as movie magic is flimsy.

less about a olot than about vibes and the fact that ignorance is bliss and cowardice and love does not absolve us of our crimes.

[Ella Shoup · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first novel of hers I’ve read! I loved how economical and poetic it was, structured like a screen play. Like many of her books I miss a lot of references, but it always inspires me to find out more about the world the book was set in.