Customer Reviews

Silk

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Silk, by Alessandro Baricco, is the story of Hervé Joncour, a French silk breeder living in the small town of Lavilledieu. In 1861, when epidemics were striking the hatcheries of Europe, Joncour began to travel to Syria and Egypt to acquire healthy eggs for the town. When his friend, Baldabiou tells his of the extraordinary silk produced in Japan, Joncour embarks on the first of four journeys to what then was determined to be "the end of the world." Traveling by train, horseback, and ship, Joncour always takes the same route and always deals with an enigmatic man named Hara Kei, "the most elusive man in Japan, master of all that the world contrived to carry off the island." But more important to Joncour than Hara Kei is Hara Kei's concubine, a young girl, of which we learn nothing, excpept that "her eyes did not have an Oriental slant." Even though they do not touch and do not speak, Joncour, a true romantic, falls instantly in love with this strange and beautiful girl and comes to believe that his love is returned, although by his fourth and final trip to Japan, he does resign himself to the fact that she will remain forever out of his reach. Civil was in Japan has torn Hara Kei's village apart and Joncour returns to Lavilledieu and to his faithful and loving wife Hélène, resigned that "in the whole world there was nothing beautiful left." Now a wealthy man, Joncour settles down to life in Lavilledieu with Hélène util the arrival of a letter, posted in Belgium, arrives. Written entirely in Japanese, Joncour believes it looks "like a catalogue of the footprints of little birds, fantastically meticulous in its compilation." When the letter is finally translated, Joncour learns the earth-shattering truth, truth he should have known all along, and his life, as well as the lives of others, are shown to be nothing more than a heart-breaking string of missed opportunities and the vulnerability of assumptions. What is most powerful in Silk is not what is said, but what is left unsaid. The book is highly stylized and enigmatic. We are never given any details about Hara Kei's concubine, Joncour's journeys to the East, or Hélène's feelings about her husband. Yet, I find I must disagree with those reviewers who criticized the book as containing little character development. I felt the characters were developed most excellently and by the book's end, I felt I had come to know most of them and was certainly able to identify with their plight. And, although the writing is lyrical, with strong undercurrents of eroticism throughout, it is both ephemeral and spare. It is most definitely prose and not poetry. Much in this book is reiterative narration, leading us to believe that nothing that happens in Japan upsets the calm day-to-day existence of Joncour and his wife in Lavilledieu. Even late in his life, Joncour spends his days "with a liturgy of habits that succeeded in warding off sadness." Silk is a small, slim book, but one that packs a lifetime of experience between its covers. It is a stylistic tour de force, a haunting haiku, and a heart-breaking allegory of life as a quest, ultimately unfulfilled. In short, it is a masterpiece of love and loss that is well worth reading time and time again.

Alessandro Baricco's SILK is a rare extended poem or aria of a novel. The author's background as a musicologist is evident in the way he fashions his tale of sensuality and eroticism: statements are made only to be repeated verbatim later in the story of four excursions to Japan as though having said it once merely requires a reprise; moments of visual senses and responses are in fragments, like breaths inhaling and exhaling the unspeakable quality of beauty and desire; the 'chapters' are brief, often one page in length, like an aside to the reader. It is a hauntingly beautiful song and Baricco composes it well (the translation from the original Italian by Ann Goldstein is equally as sensitive).

Hervé Joncour is a silkworm merchant living in 1861 France in a town Lavilledieu whose wealth is dependent on the silk manufactured form the eggs and hatched larvae of the silkworm. He is married to Hélène Joncour, a beautiful wife who allows her husband to make trips to far away lands to support the town industry. They are a happy couple, hoping for a child. Baldabiou is a businessman who encourages Joncour to travel to the then dangerous Japan to gather silkworm eggs not infected with the disease that threatens local eggs. Joncour sets out to Japan, a long journey through Europe, Russia, Siberia, and China to a Japanese village Shirakawa where he meets he chieftain Hara Kei - but more importantly, where he first encounters the gaze of a nameless beautiful woman - a girl with eyes not the shape of Oriental eyes - who appears to be a mistress of Hara Kei. That exchanged gaze, wordless, leads to the obsessive infatuation that rules Joncour's life. The story repeatedly visits this moment and the clandestine 'love' that occurs between the two. How Joncour and Hélène and Baldabiou and Hara Kei weave in and out of this silken fantasy provides the quiet yet operatic dénouement for this whisper of a story.

Baricco manages to teach us about the silk industry, about the politics of the time, and about the East/West relationships with succinct means. But the greater challenge of the book is the relating of the erotic dream that is as elusive as the strands of silk that start it all. This is a novella (an extended poem) to be re-read many times, not only for the story but also for the magic of the author's unique writing. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, January 08

This lovely little jewel of a book actually reminds me of the relationship I have with my own wife. However, unlike Joncour, I am lucky enough to realize that what I seek is right under my own roof. The letter Joncour thought he received from the concubine reminds me of the letters and the passion I share with my beloved and it also tells me how very lucky I am to be married to the woman of my dreams. This is an amazing book and anyone who loves or wants to love whould read it. There are lessons in it for all of us.

Silk is a romantic fable of sensuality and passion blended with bittersweet irony. Herve Joncour's travels in quest of silk worms takes him around the world, but the beauty of the story has nothing to do with either silk worms or travel. The beauty comes from the intense desire and passion the author has captured in such concise form. The reader is immediately aware, not only from the slim slip of a book that it is, but from the scarcity of words that comprise each chapter, that this story will be told neatly, breathlessly, like poetry breezing off each page. One only truly understands the layers of emotion the author has created to bind the relationships of the three main characters at the end, and then at that, with only a few deft words, the poignant irony of the story stabs at the heart like the piercing sting of an arrow. That Alessandro Barrico could express such depth of feeling in prose so sparse, begs one to compare his style to that of the elegant lightness of silk itself. It is simply breathtaking, and well worth tears shed at the end.

I believe it is a proverb of the African bushmen, "A story is like the wind, it comes from a far-off quarter, and we feel it."

Those words were invented to describe this stirring gem from Baricco.

His prose feels much like a light autumn breeze, soft yet wondrously mermerizing. With ballad-like refrains and sublime descriptions of the harmonious way of Japanese life, we are drawn into an evocative portrait of what it means to be human, at our most elemental, and the effect is awesome.

The hypnotic curiosity of a distant unrequited love leads the novel to its stark and tempestuos end, which lingers in your mind long after you've turned the last page in bewilderment.

I have never read such an effortlessly haunting saga of compassion, obsession, intrigue. Kudos to the translator for retaining Baricco's original Italian delicacy.

It takes about 2 hours to journey between the novel's shores, but I bet you'll take the voyage more than once.

I love this book. It annoys me to see people dismiss it as characterless or tryhard poetry/prose.

Let's put this book in context. It's succinct and it's Italian in origin. I suspect that most people who have not liked Silk probably ignore these factors. If a book can be read in one sitting by an average reader than obviously it leaves a great deal to the imagination. We travel thousands of miles from France to Japan in a paragraph and the names of the places along the way are enough to conjure images both mysterious and romantic in the readers mind.

A good friend of mine gave me the book and said she cried through most of it. I can see why she did but I'm inclined to disagree. For me Silk has less to do with tragedy and more to do with the human condition. Some characters live their life as best they can while others are left spectating (and looking in the wrong direction at that). Waldman is to be congratulated for revealing Baricco's muse to the english speaking world.

I would recommend this book to anyone and advise them to read it in one sitting. I guarantee you will want to read it again.

I was simply overwhelmed after having read this book, which was a very pleasant and challenging introduction into Alessandro Baricco's world.
This is more than a book, it is a soft touch which tells you the beautiful story of nostalgia for a love that can never be lived.

It will not take you more than one hour to read it, but it will be one hour full of peace, in which you will discover the mistery of a life, of a country, of sensual love, of an illusion.

Baricco is very poetical and his simple and delicate manner of story telling, which flows like a river, is what makes the book great. The beauty comes also from the understated sensuality and passion that derives from the plot, as well as from the "silence" that this book gives off. You can feel there is no need for too many words - too much has already been told.

The whole story is written with a soft pen, as if instead of ink, the writer used silk. This is perfect to create the a subtle and exotic atmosphere. In only 100 pages one can find out about Herve Joncourt and his life, his wife, his business partners, his travels to Japan, the imposibility to fight and win his love and touch his dream.

I don't want to say too much about Silk, as I would like you to convince yourselves that it is just breathtaking.

Alessandro Baricco isn't a prolific writer, but what he does produce is perfect. "Silk" is one very good example. In "Silk," what is not written is far more powerful than what is and, despite this book's slim size, it contains a very complex plot.

The story in "Silk" revolves around Herve Joncour, a 19th century French silk merchant and his quest to find new silkworm eggs in faraway Japan. On the first of many visits to Japan, Joncour encounters a beautiful woman, a woman to whom he never speaks and will never know, but with whom he falls hopelessly in love, despite his faithful wife who waits for him in France.

"Silk" is a book about the struggle of daily life, the struggle to survive, the interior struggle to do what is morally right, yet the style of the book is extraordinarily elegant, enigmatic and very, very deliberate. The silence of "Silk" simply "is." We are never privy to Joncour's desire for the woman in Japan, a woman with a curious Western face, but we know it's there. In the same vein, Baricco never tells us of Joncour's wife's knowledge of her husband's longing, his secret desires, his feeling for the woman in Japan as well as his feelings for her. I think mature readers will derive the most from "Silk" for this is a book that is highly individualized; much depends greatly on a reader's intuitive understanding of human nature and all its nuances and the more life experience a reader has, the more he or she will understand what Joncour and his wife understand.

What is really amazing is how much plot Baricco manages to pack into this beautiful, quiet, slim, little book. We learn about 19th century travel with all its pleasures and its perils; we learn about the dependence of a small French village on a small Japanese one; we learn about the secret longings of the heart that can never be fulfilled; and we learn about the communication that can exist between a man and wife, a communication born of many years of marriage and one that needs no words.

The two storylines, the one of Joncour as he travels to Japan and the one of Joncour who lives in blissful domesticity with his wife, Helene, eventually meet in an enigmatic letter written entirely in Japanese. Joncour, of course, cannot read it, and he thinks it looks "like a catalogue of the footprints of little birds, fantastically meticulous in its compilation." This letter, which proves to be a tiny masterpiece, is the key to the enigma of Joncour, Helene, and the mysterious woman in Japan.

When we finally realize what has been going on, when the mystery of the letter is finally solved and both we and Joncour know what it says and who sent it, we have to ask ourselves: Whose love was greater, Joncour's or Helene's?

"Silk" is a beautiful book, one of the most beautiful I have ever read, but it is also heartbreaking. Still, this story is worth every tear that we may shed over its telling and, in the end, we must ask ourselves if love is worth the voluptuous pleasure we attach to it or is it simply, in the end, something that will break our heart time and time again.

Other reviewers have said it much better than I. I only want to cast my vote and tell anyone considering the book to buy it now. It is beautiful and heartbreaking.

I can't recall the last time I read a short novel as efficiently beautiful as this. Silk is a very economic story of pining devotion and covert obsession [ah, but between which players]. Mixing a stylized poetry and prose, the Italian author tells the story of a 19th century French silkworm trader and his numerous clandestine visits to Japan to replenish their [French] dying silk trade. This takes place prior to Commodore Perry's opening of Japan, so risks against foreigners are quite real. Leaving his beloved but somewhat staid wife each October, the main character departs his village with his cargo of gold to return the next April with silkworm eggs. The author portrays this physical journey on a single page multiple times in metronomic succession. Hervé's arrival in Japan and eventual audience with a local lord allows him to gaze in sublimated wonder at the lord's beautiful concubine. An unspoken poignant moment occurs between the two as they gaze languidly at each other. At this point the reader knows these two will be linked somehow. The reader however is not given access to Hervé's heart. He makes his way back to France, back to his wife, whom he proceeds to love even more. The next year's journey to Japan allows him another opportunity to observe the doll-like mistress, but this time an assignation occurs. How will Hervé reconcile his wistful desire for the concubine with his unwavering devotion to his French wife? I found the quality and pacing of the translation to approach the style of certain Japanese texts I have read, and the effect is austerely provocative. Combining the allure and mystery of Japan, turn of the century romance, and a lyrical poetic quality, Silk does not disappoint. In its thin confines, the novel ultimately provides numerous glimpses into the heart of a man and woman. Recommended.