The best guides to a city s secrets can sometimes be found in books that have nothing to do with travel. In this series, Book It, we invite authors to reveal what they truly love about the cities where their stories are set or the ones they call home.
Olivia Laing is out with their latest, The Silver Book (FSG), a queer love story and noirish thriller set in the world of Italian cinema in the 1970s. “I wrote The Silver Book while living in Rome, immersing myself in the city and trying to time-travel back to 1975, when the film directors Pasolini and Fellini walked the streets,” Laing explains via e-mail. “I wrote it in a feverish two-and-a-half months, charged up on the city’s wild energy.” It is about (real) Academy Award–winning costume designer Danilo Donati and a (fictional) English artist, Nicholas, who becomes his apprentice and lover. Readers see the two at work on sets and wardrobe for Federico Fellini’s Casanova and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Salò,” against the backdrop of legendary film studio Cinecittà in Rome–and Pasolini’s murder in 1975. It is, Laing posted on Instagram, “an investigation into the difficult relationship between artifice and truth, illusion and reality, sex and power.”
It isn’t Laing s first book set in the Boot. Their novel, Crudo, was inspired by a trip to Val d’Orcia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Tuscany. Laing may have been a temporary resident of the Eternal City, but that did not prevent the author from developing a set of favorite haunts. “Rome is the ultimate as well as the eternal city. Everything happened here,” Laing tells Vogue. “It’s beautiful beyond reason and changes your relationship to time.”
Hotel: I stay at the British School at Rome, which is basically like living in a Muriel Spark novel circa 1955.
Restaurant: Piatto Romano, but it’s hardcore Roman-style. Be prepared for a very no-frills rabbit.
Breakfast: Get a cornetto and cappuccino at Canova and pretend you’re Fellini. The waiters probably won’t make such a fuss of you, but you’re in Piazza del Popolo so what do you care?
Caffeine fix: It’s Rome, you can have coffee literally anywhere. Please stand up.
Dessert: Blackberry gelato at Giolitti, a classic for a reason. Yes, you want panna.
Best dish: Puntarelle alla romana, bitter greens tossed in anchovy, a dream in grey and rainy January.
Shop I’m obsessed with: Schostal, for socks and especially delicious stripy cotton men’s boxer shorts, my summer uniform.
Place I always visit when in town: The Borghese Gardens to visit Dante.
To see art: Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica at Palazzo Barberini is full of staggering masterpieces and is never crowded, despite an embarrassment of Caravaggios. Or just walk through the streets with your head up.
To stock up on beauty buys: Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella for perfume and soaps made by nuns to ancient recipes. I love Tabacco Toscano.
Must-buy souvenir: The priest calendar is at every newsstand in the city and never fails to make me smile.
Nature escape: Go down to the Tiber, and enjoy the spectacle of starlings in the plane trees and bright green parakeets whizzing over moody green water.
For peace and quiet: The Botanic Garden is very special. I once did an event in the limonaia, where the lemon trees spend their winter holidays.
Best way to get around town: On your feet, my friend. Golf buggies are for losers.
Best view: In a city of seven hills there’s no shortage of vantage points, but I do love the view from the Janiculum Hill. But don’t forget the opening scene of La Grande Belleza, where a tourist takes one look and drops dead from an excess of beauty.
Best time to visit, weather-wise: October, when the temperatures drop and the light is so liquid it’s like a shot of pure serotonin.
Something you should know about my city: Rome is the ultimate as well as the eternal city. Everything happened here. It’s beautiful beyond reason and changes your relationship to time.
How this city influences my writing: I wrote The Silver Book in a feverish two-and-a-half months, charged up on the city’s wild energy.