I didn’t know much about Pasolini’s films or his murder in the mid seventies, but Olivia Laing’s novel describes what may have happened with an air of authenticity. Like Nicholas the main character, we are immersed in a surreal world of outrageous costumes and movie sets that his lover Dani creates to bring the creative visions of Pasolini and Fellini into being. The devil is definitely in the detail and the author has done their research and writes with conviction. It’s the novel’s ending that I find less satisfactory. In the aftermath of being discarded by Dani, Nicholas is persuaded into stealing reels of film and it’s uncertain whether his actions contributed to Pasolini’s murder. ‘The Silver Book’ ends abruptly and leaves too many questions unanswered.

This is a fascinating novel, weaving fiction with non-fiction elements and packed with detail. Readers of Laing's previous works will recognise some familiar themes and narrative tangents.

This book could be written about today. Substitute the violence towards gay men in this book for the increasingly terrible treatment of trans people today. The lingering fascism in post-war Italy is an analog for the rise in fascism across Europe today.
In the book, Pasolini is the Cassandra figure, warning of violence just underneath the surface of polite society. From the end of the book:
"What he says is a warning. It is a warning about the world, about what he calls the power machine, and how it is affecting every aspect of society. Pasolini says that violence happens on every level of society." People in minority groups living on the margins of society always notice and experience violence first.

A brilliant blend of fact and fiction.

The real life murder of Italian director Pasolini and the fictional romance of English artist and Italian designer involved with films.

The characters are well fleshed out and feel real, the scenes are vivid and flashing like in a movie. The whole books matches with Laing’s particular writing style and makes for an immersive read.

Interesting a good base for further reading on this subject. Well written and immersive and set in italy what more could you want.

This is good!

A lot of history and a real life murder mystery that I had never hear about


Lots to love here and discuss. so I want it to come out and see who else has read it and who thought what. Lots I need to explore!

This book was absolutely love. Laing has such a specific and elegant voice. I had not heard of the murder of Pasolini before and enjoyed learning about that piece of history. The love story is well drawn and both men are compelling in their own ways. This is a slim novel but packs a powerful punch.

"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 is growing in stars and stature.

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.

I have long been interested in reading Olivia Laing so am delighted to have the opportunity.
The novel opens with a contented young man Nicholas, an artist who we observe absorbing shocking headlines which outline another man’s disappearance. Nicholas flees the UK, the reader is not privy to what the relationship between these two may be.
Nicholas lands in Venice where he is seduced and then employed as an assistant in a Fellini production by one Danilo Donati.
The story unfolds from these two perspectives; Dani the 50 something celebrated costume designer to Fellini and Pasolini and Nicholas the young man. Weaved into the true story of the making of Salo, a hugely controversial film based on the last bastion of fascism in Italy and 120 days of Sodom, followed by the filming of Casanova; is the burgeoning love between Dani and Nicholas.
This is loving and warm in the beginning,in a way the boy has never experienced, being rejected by his family for his homosexuality. “I just wanted to say, I’m twenty-three now and this is the first birthday where I’ve felt like I had a real home”. However as the chaos of his real life and the traumatic experience of two troubled film sets begin to affect both Danilo and Nicholas the love affair begins to fray.
Written in a breathless present tense, allowing for a sense of immediacy and tense exciting possibility; the opening chapters are propulsive and the prose spare and affecting.
Beautifully written with reflection on the political currents in Italy in the late 60s, and the reality of homosexual life in this era, it captivated me and drew me into the story. I found myself deep diving into the filming of these 2 epics and their reception at the time.
He (Danilo)knows what happened in Salo 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.
A really fascinating and insightful read.
Thanks to Penguin UK and NetGalley.

I read this in one sitting. I literally could not put this down. Beautiful. Just beautiful. The characterisation, the descriptions, the everything. One of the best things I've read this year. Perfect.

Exquisitely written and highly enjoyable. More period piece and love story than thriller. Well worth reading. Special thank you to Penguin Random House and NetGalley for a no obligation digital advance review copy.

I was unsure at the start, but there was something about the writing that almost coerced me to keep going and I'm glad I did.
The layering of what wasn't said in the book mirrored what was unsaid in the films around which the story is set. Compelling and fascinating. You don't realise it's happening.
And the injustice and the brutality that remains hidden behind the made-up version of events or 'fake' news as we call it now, makes me as a reader wonder if anything will ever change. Definitely worth reading.

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

The Silver Book is an immersive and beautifully written novel that celebrates the complicated and passionate Italian filmmakers of the 70s. I was hooked from the first page, and both sad and satisfied when I finished. One of the best novels I’ve read this year.

this was fine. i thought the writing was a bit over-the-top at times, almost like laing was trying too hard to sound poetic. i did like the characters and how they were fleshed out; however, i tend to have a hard time reading fictionalised accounts of real individuals’ lives, particularly when they involve love affairs and/or romantic relationships of some sort, so i wasn’t fully able to dissociate the characters from the fact that they were real-life people, which made it all feel a little gimmicky and even intrusive at times.

First book by Laing that I've finished from cover to cover, and it makes me what to return to her previous ones that I didn't invest enough time and or attention to. I've always been intrigued by her work, and this was very promising on paper, and ultimately I found it to be absolutely brilliant. A very rewarding read, informative, engaging and brimming with beauty in every sense of the word. Very glad to have read this one in advance. Looking forward to read more of her work very soon. Not for film enthusiasts only, dare I say it doesn't even matter if you like Pasolini or not. Laing's prose will pull you in either way.

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.

If you enjoy the films of Fellini and Pasolini, you will find the insights and stories in this novel hugely enjoyable. If you know nothing of the films of Fellini and Pasolini (as I do), you will find this novel illuminating and captivating.

This is the story of Nicholas, a young art student in London, who flees, panic stricken after a breakup with his lover, to Rome where he is picked up by Danilo Donati, a top costume designer, working at Cinecittà, the Italian Hollywood. The time is 1974 and soon Nicholas is assisting Danilo at work and in his bed. We’re with them as work is planned and made for Fellini’s ‘Casanova’ and Pasolini’s ‘Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom’.

This novel is plot-lite in that it reads more like a piece of creative non-fiction rather than as a typical novel with character arcs and plot points. This doesn’t detract from its readability and this book is not without incident. Nico and Danilo have their relationship ups and downs and there is intrigue about missing rolls of film.

The author has an innovative way of writing that can be challenging but is always readable. Dialogue is almost always without quotation marks and is embedded with paragraphs. Sometimes the point-of-view changes within a paragraph so you have to work hard to know who’s speaking. However once you have become accustomed to this, the story does flow and begins to take on the quality of a stream-of-consciousness.

If you have an interest in Italian cinema of the 1970s or indeed, an interest in how cinema is made, then this novel is well worth considering. It’s a lighter read than might be expected but with some big issues around the politics of the time thrown in.

I’m grateful to Penguin Random House and to NetGalley for making a pre-publication copy available so that I might make an honest review.

Set during in Italy's Years of Lead, marked by atrocities and violent clashes between the extreme left and right, Olivia Laing’s novel follows Nicholas who has fled London for Venice. After a chance encounter with renowned costume and set designer, Danilo Donati, he finds himself working first on Fellini’s Casanova, then Pasolini’s Salò, a reimagining of De Sade’s The 120 days of Sodom played out against the backdrop of the eponymous republic where Mussolini was installed by the Nazis, a site with personal resonance for both Danilo and Pasolini. When Casanova resumes, Danilo and Nicholas return to Rome where the delight of finishing the film is interrupted by news of Pasolini’s brutal murder. There’s a convenient confession, but no one really believes the confessor.
Laing folds her research seamlessly into this elegantly constructed, immersive novel. Just as Pasolini used Salò to draw parallels between fascism in the 1940s and the political violence of the 1970s, Laing implicitly does the same with the Years of Lead and our own time while telling Nicholas and Danilo's love story. We see events from Nicholas’s perspective, a naïve yet worldly young man, often ill at ease but entranced by the all-consuming world of cinema and its creators. Laing's descriptions of sets and costumes are strikingly evocative while her cool precision lends a distance to some of the more graphic descriptions of Pasolini’s work making it all the more effective, not least in the brutality of his murder which still remains unsolved. The blurb uses the word ‘noirish’ presumably for the mystery of what’s brought Nicholas to Italy but this is much more a beautifully executed novel of ideas wrapped up in an homage to Italian cinema which sounds a loud warning about our own times.

The Silver Book is the story of Nicholas, a young English artist, and Danilo, a costume designer for Italian cinema. The two meet in Venice, then Danilo brings Nicholas to Rome and introduces him to the world of cinematography. The story follows their relationship within the sphere of cinema; it is an evocative story, both emotional and sensual.

The author has cleverly interspersed into the story a recounting of the murder of Pier Paulo Pasolini, an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright, who was brutally abducted, tortured and murdered in 1975. Pasolini was at the time exposing corruption and violence within Mussolini’s fascist state. Laing is the author of four books of nonfiction, each mixing cultural criticism and memoir with elements of biography and travel writing. It is not unexpected therefore that these themes are encompassed within this work.

This is a captivating story, it is however a slow burn and would not appeal to lovers of fast paced action stories. I would recommend the book to readers who enjoy modern contemporary fiction with a focus on emerging cinema in the 1970’s. Please do note that there are some quite graphic descriptions of the physical relationship between the main characters that some readers may consider offensive.