Published By: Hamish Hamilton
Pages: 288
Released On: 06/11/2025
It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova. A young – and beautiful – apprentice is just what he needs.
He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini’s horrifying fable of fascism.
But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy’s ‘Years of Lead’, he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Hamish Hamilton for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
This had been on my wishlist for so long and I was really excited to read it, but it sadly did not live up to what I expected.
There’s no real dialogue to speak of. It’s very retrospective, like an outsider describing something that has happened, and any conversation is merged within this monologue-type narrative Olivia has given us. It keeps the reader at arms length, never really inviting them to connect with the story or the characters. It also made the story feel rushed because you never get a pause to listen to anyone.
I’ve not read Olivia’s fiction book, only their nonfiction, and so I didn’t know how their writing style would transcend from fact to fiction (albeit fiction based on fact), and if I’m honest, I think their nonfiction is so much better because it feels more personal and the reader can go on a journey. But this novel feels so difficult to reach that you end up losing that emotive connection.
It’s based on a true story, a story I didn’t know about and so I enjoyed that aspect of it.
There is no denying Olivia’s ability to write, their talent of structuring a story, but there just wasn’t enough storyline or character development or heart in this book for me to truly enjoy it. Everything got a bit lost. In a way, it felt like an early draft, like Olivia had had all these ideas, but wasn’t quite sure how to use them, so they just put them all in and left it, and it made it feel unfinished and unfortunately quite forgettable.
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