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A review by doritobabe
Silk by Alessandro Baricco
3.0
Interesting 19th Century novella regarding the silk trade in France. Hailed as an international bestseller, translated into over 27 languages
TL;DR:
Writing: 3/5 (Very repetitious. I am aware that this is a writing device but soon I found myself skipping over these paragraphs. Pages were also each a chapter... Style left much to be desired.)
Plot: 2.5/5 (Reading this after [b:The Lover|275|The Lover|Marguerite Duras|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1423329337s/275.jpg|1009849] makes me feel like it tried too hard to follow in Duras' footsteps. Not much happens... the tale does not suck the reader in enough.)
Characters: 3.5/5 (The protagonist is selfish, the lover is two dimensional. My favorite characters were the mill owner, the japanese concubine, and the wife.)
Apparently this has received so much acclaim that it was made into a film. Might watch it.
Silk follows the entrepreneurial travels of a merchant to Japan in order to collect healthy silkworm eggs. This man undertakes this trip four times to a Japan that is closed off to foreigners. (I actually read this book in the wake of Endo's [b:Silence|25200|Silence|Shūsaku Endō|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1503294393s/25200.jpg|1796157] so I have gained an understanding of why this was so.) There the man he trades with has a concubine that he is enchanted by. This concubine expresses a weird interest in our protagonist, so much so that it fully encapsulates the merchant to the point of obsession. Later, the reader finds out that the wife played off of this obsession until her untimely death, expressing a poignant moral to the reader. (I am left a bit confused by the moral, however. I do not know why, but I am left with a question in my mind.) The final love letter is a highlight of this novel as it is erotic, expressly romantic and plays a double-edged-sword for the protagonist.
Overall, a nice simple read. I think background information definitely helps the reader. It is probably much more enjoyed if one has not read [b:The Lover|275|The Lover|Marguerite Duras|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1423329337s/275.jpg|1009849] in such close succession. The most annoying part was the weird single page chapters.
TL;DR:
Writing: 3/5 (Very repetitious. I am aware that this is a writing device but soon I found myself skipping over these paragraphs. Pages were also each a chapter... Style left much to be desired.)
Plot: 2.5/5 (Reading this after [b:The Lover|275|The Lover|Marguerite Duras|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1423329337s/275.jpg|1009849] makes me feel like it tried too hard to follow in Duras' footsteps. Not much happens... the tale does not suck the reader in enough.)
Characters: 3.5/5 (The protagonist is selfish, the lover is two dimensional. My favorite characters were the mill owner, the japanese concubine, and the wife.)
Apparently this has received so much acclaim that it was made into a film. Might watch it.
Silk follows the entrepreneurial travels of a merchant to Japan in order to collect healthy silkworm eggs. This man undertakes this trip four times to a Japan that is closed off to foreigners. (I actually read this book in the wake of Endo's [b:Silence|25200|Silence|Shūsaku Endō|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1503294393s/25200.jpg|1796157] so I have gained an understanding of why this was so.) There the man he trades with has a concubine that he is enchanted by. This concubine expresses a weird interest in our protagonist, so much so that it fully encapsulates the merchant to the point of obsession. Later, the reader finds out that the wife played off of this obsession until her untimely death, expressing a poignant moral to the reader. (I am left a bit confused by the moral, however. I do not know why, but I am left with a question in my mind.) The final love letter is a highlight of this novel as it is erotic, expressly romantic and plays a double-edged-sword for the protagonist.
Overall, a nice simple read. I think background information definitely helps the reader. It is probably much more enjoyed if one has not read [b:The Lover|275|The Lover|Marguerite Duras|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1423329337s/275.jpg|1009849] in such close succession. The most annoying part was the weird single page chapters.