Silk

Alessandro Baricco

Silk is a tiny novella consisting of barely more than 100 pages, many of which consist of little more than a sentence or two. The author is Italian but it's set partly in France and partly in Japan. Its protagonist is Herve Joncour, a man of quiet habits, a married man, and his speciality is procuring silkworm eggs from far off lands to provide for the silk producing factories in his native France. During a trip to Japan, in 1861, he falls for the mistress of his Japanese host. It's an affair of the eyes. Physical contact is out of the question and even communication is problematic because of the language barrier. Joncour renews his strange obsession with annual business trips to Japan but only back in Paris and towards the end of his life is the riddle (or at least a part of it) of Joncour's mystery woman resolved.

Ee Lin wrote that its symbolism passed her by but I'm going to have a crack at what I think Baricco intends by his fable. It seems to me it's warning us not to yearn for the unobtainable when something infinitely more precious is already under our noses. But then maybe I'm a complacent old buffer lacking ambition and adventurous spirit.

Either way, the prose style in Silk is interesting enough in its own right to make a visit to this book worth your while. It's written almost as a ballad. It has rhythm. At times it reminded me of children's literature. Other times its small, dry punchlines and its repetition made me think of a comedy routine or the start of a shaggy dog story. Truly a peculiar book.