The Silver Book

Laing’s accomplished second novel, The Silver Book, feels like a precision-controlled environment. In taut sentences, Laing evokes the sensuous eroticism and incipient danger of it 1970s Italian setting, moving towards a shattering conclusion . . . rigorously researched and realised historical fiction . . . 1970s Rome swaggers from the page -- Patricia Nicol * The Times *
Donati is described as an “illusionist”. So, too, is Laing, who seamlessly inserts a fictional narrative into a real historical world . . . a prose that pares down and transforms the messiness of the real into sentence after sentence of unforced lucidity . . . the author’s scene-setting is managed with deftness…a gripping novel that is, in many ways, a technical tour de force -- Lucasta Miller * Times Literary Supplement *
Laing draws on the Italian director’s unsolved murder for their sumptuous second novel…Laing has such a gift for capturing shimmering details . . . Laing, a great chronicler of male genius, sexuality, loneliness and madness -- Olivia Ovenden * Observer *
The Silver Book, an absorbing amalgam of fact and fiction, exalts Salo as an admonitory horror masterwork of our times -- Ian Thompson * New Statesman *
Laing’s prose is sleek and gratifying, purring with sateen grace * ArtReview *
Set on surreal Italian film sets, this noir-tinged novel explores queer desire, creativity and dangerous secrets. Loosely based on real events, it captures the glamour and moral fog of the 1970s art world * i Paper, 'Best Books to Read in November' *
Like the script of an unwritten movie, voyeuristic, slick with 1970s decadence, glittering with shadows and unspoken sins, The Silver Book is lush, intense, wildly evocative; subtly freighted with emotional power and sensuality, it is simply their best book yet -- Philip Hoare
The Silver Book is an astounding work. It's difficult to believe this isn't an eyewitness account: the characters appear to live and breathe in actual time and we experience with them all the erotic tensions, as well as the tragedies, involved in their defiant pursuit of beauty. The world of Fellini and Pasolini is uncannily resurrected in this visionary narrative -- Celia Paul
Transporting, heartbreaking, beautiful. I did not want this story to end -- Nigel Slater
A truly wonderful book -- Edmund de Waal