A Glossy But Hollow Journey Through Italian Cinema
Olivia Laing's second novel, The Silver Book, transports readers to the dazzling world of 1970s Italian cinema, but ultimately fails to deliver the depth its subject matter demands. Set in 1974, the book immerses itself in the extravagant film sets, lavish costumes, and charismatic figures of the era, including the controversial director Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The Promise of Political Depth
The novel opens with its protagonist, Nicholas, fleeing London for Italy under mysterious circumstances. In Venice, he encounters real-life set designer Danilo Donati, who becomes both his lover and employer. Their journey takes them to the heart of Italian filmmaking - from Federico Fellini's Casanova set in Rome to the remote villa where Pasolini filmed his notorious masterpiece Salò.
Laing's writing shows moments of brilliance, particularly in her descriptions. She portrays Fellini's Casanova as "floating on a greasy tide of his own compulsions through the guttering century", while Pasolini possesses the physical presence of a downed power line. However, these flashes of excellence are undermined by the novel's structural limitations.
Style Over Substance
The book employs a distinctive format of tight, present-tense paragraphs separated by line breaks. While initially lending pace, this technique becomes restrictive as the narrative attempts to tackle more complex themes. Laing frequently resorts to lists rather than developed descriptions, reducing memories, characters, and landscapes to bullet-pointed inventories.
This taxonomic approach proves particularly problematic when dealing with weighty historical subjects. The novel equates fabric textures with the trauma of deportation, describing both in the same cursory, free-associative language. A stretch of cream damask receives the same narrative weight as memories of wartime atrocities, flattening the emotional landscape.
Evading Difficult Truths
The book's most significant failure lies in its treatment of Pasolini's legacy and the political themes it invokes. While constantly referencing fascism, cruising culture, and Rome's sub-proletarian world, Laing never dares to depict these elements with any substantive detail. Pasolini's Salò, which reimagined the Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom as a visceral examination of fascist violence, becomes in Laing's hands merely a dressmaker's dream - all props and costumes stripped of their shocking power.
The novel mentions cruising - both a vital part of Pasolini's life and the backdrop to his unsolved murder - but provides no meaningful exploration. Similarly, fascism remains an abstract concept rather than a lived experience with visible victims and machinery.
An Instagram Feed Between Covers
The cumulative effect is a work that feels perfectly tailored for contemporary consumption. With its focus on clothes, food, glossy aesthetics, and artfully arranged prose squares, The Silver Book resembles an Instagram feed bound as a novel. It offers the appearance of radical chic while carefully avoiding any genuine transgression or political engagement.
In her afterword, Laing suggests that focusing on individual culpability in Pasolini's murder misses his broader warnings about systemic complicity. Yet this feels like the final evasion in a novel that has shown readers nothing of this system's workings or our own potential culpability within it.
The Silver Book ultimately presents itself as a work about beauty and political courage while demonstrating neither. It remains hypnotised by surface appeal, maintaining a safe distance from everything it hints at in pursuit of depth. Published by Hamish Hamilton at £20, the novel offers plenty of style but ultimately lacks the substance its ambitious subject matter demands.
