Silk (Seta), by Alessandro Baricco
"Although his father had imagined for him a brilliant future in the army, Hervé Joncour ended up earning his living in an unusual profession that, with singular irony, had a feature so sweet as to betray a vaguely feminine intonation." (from http://thefirstsentence.tumblr.com/ and I apologize for my laziness)
Publication date: Italy 1996
Available English translations: Guido Waldman (The Harvill Press, 1997), Ann Goldstein (Canongate Books Ltd, 2006)
My edition: 2003, translated into German by Karin Krieger
Publisher: Piper
# of pages: 131
Source: amazon.de used
Summary/Back of the book:
"Silk" is the simple story of a man who trades in silk. On his travels, he falls in love with a woman he can never have.
"Silk" is also the complicated story of a man who is caught between two women and two countries, between loyalties and politics.
The back of my book reads as follows (translation by me):
In the fall of 1861, the silk trader Hervé Joncour, from the South of France, begins the arduous journey to Japan to buy silk worms. When he meets a mysterious Beauty, all they can share are secretive looks and a short written message - that's all it takes to inflame Hervés passion and bring him back to Japan year after year. But he will never even hear the voice of this girl. Only many years later will he understand the meaning of what has happened.
My review:
On a personal note, I read this book in German as I did all books by Baricco I read, simply because a translation is a translation is a translation and this edition matched the ones I already owned.
This book, for me, was a re-read. I thought, when I received this assignment, that I had it in my collection anyway, but I was wrong, and that's the only reason it took longer than a day to post this review, because I could not wait to start reading. A few (*cough*10*cough*) years ago, I absolutely loved reading Baricco, and I'm not sure why I stopped. So anyway, I was very glad to be assigned this book and to re-discover an author I once loved and add one of his books to my collection.
"Silk" is a quick and rewarding read, almost a fairy tale, not really a novel, I'd call it a novella even if the publisher does not. Actually, I write fairy tale because I have my head full of fairy tales and without thinking, but now that I think of it - the narrative structure with many repetitions, almost like incantations, the story of a man going out into the world, the mysterious woman hidden from the world, that's all actually quite fairy-tale like. The story, however, is not what makes this book, oddly compelling and, in the end, sad and surprising as it is. The voice is what carries this novel, like a soft veil of silk (yes) the narration envelops you in a warming yet cool shroud, the simple, soft sentences read lush and yearning, almost like a song by Leonard Cohen, pardon the comparison. A soft melancholy clings to every sentence and transports you into quite another, far away world, and the sentences are very Japanese in their minimalism, very musical in structure.
Now, I'm sure there are a lot of points of critique one could have with this novel, especially with the sparse description of Japan and it's customs, but I chose to read this book as a fairy tale, as I said, and not as a historical novel, and as such, the lack of detail, the broad brushstrokes work.
This book is a quick read ideal for the bathtub or a train ride, any situation where you'd like to isolate yourself in a warm bubble of reading.