The Silver Book

Laing, who’s written nonfiction about the lives of artists and one previous novel, Crudo, fuses the two forms with a lush narrative of art and love in 1970s Italy. The story unfolds over the year leading up to poet and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini’s murder in 1975, and its main character is Nicholas Wade, a young English artist who leaves London in September 1974 for Venice, fleeing unspecified trouble after a torrid affair with another man. Nicholas is sketching on the steps of San Vidal church when he meets costume designer and special effects artist Danilo Donati. Their one-night stand yields a yearlong apprenticeship for Nicholas, during which they work on two film productions, Federico Fellini’s Casanova and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò. In the Rome studio and on location in the countryside, Donati teaches Nicholas how to make fake snow and excrement, and they fashion “sinister, peeling buildings” into sites of a Nazi massacre. Describing the often grotesque material, Danilo proclaims: “We’re not perverts, we’re labourers in the dream factory!” As the mystery of what happened in London finally comes to light, trouble comes for Pasolini as well. It’s an intriguing plot, but most notable is Laing’s lucid showcasing of the artists’ fervent yet tender collaborations, born of a shared “love of liberty” and the “amusement rising” in a lover’s eyes. The author’s fans will adore this. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Nov.)