This exquisite brief novel annoyed me as much as anything I'd ever read twenty-something years ago, but I'd not thought about it until I got on my recent kick about people foolishly spurning the love in their lives because they imagine something better awaits.

Here a young man, Herve Joncour, whose father envisioned a career for him in the French army, is recruited by a merchant to travel on his behalf and purchase the eggs of silkworms that will feed on the town of Lavilledieu's mulberry leaves and produce the raw material for their economy. Epidemics and shortages lead to Herve traveling ever further afield, leaving behind his devoted wife Helene, but a few months work is providing them an ever grander lifestyle. Finally, he is forced to travel to a Japan that is still hostile to foreigners, having just recently been forced open by Commodore Perry. There he conducts his dangerous business but is also thunderstruck by the site of a Japanese trader's concubine and determines that the two are destined for a great love.

SPOILER ALERT: Though he returns to Japan annually for several years, various obstacles impede the relationship he imagines and when war breaks out he returns to France knowing he will never see the woman again. Indeed, he receives a farewell letter, written in Japanese, that he takes to the local brothel proprietor, Madame Blanche, a native of Japan. She reads to him the erotic missive that is all he will have left of his dream. Helene predeceases him and, eventually, a truth dawns on Herve, it was Madame Blanche who wrote the letter, at the behest of his wife, who, in an extraordinarily selfless act of love, could not bear to see him suffer. You really do just want to smack him upside the head with a two-by-four at that point. The story is a marvelous work of imagination, but a seriously painful one.

(Reviewed:08-Nov-24)

Grade: (A+) Orrin C. Judd

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Alessandro Baricco Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Alessandro Baricco
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    -FILMOGRAPHY: Alessandro Baricco (IMDB)
    -ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE: Alessandro Baricco (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum)
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    -AWARD: European Essay Prize 2020 Alessandro Baricco
    -ENTRY: Baricco, Alessandro (The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature)
    -REVIEW ARCHIVES: Alessandro Baricco (Publishers Weekly)
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    -ESSAY: Overture to the Twentieth Century (Alessandro Baricco, Spring 2006, Paris Review)
    -ESSAY: Digital Technology Has Made Day-to-Day Living a Game: "There's no escape. But that's okay." (Alessandro Baricco, December 10, 2020, LitHub)
    -ARTICLE: Storytelling school seeks to inspire a happy ending to Italy's recession: Writer Alessandro Baricco believes investment from Italian businesses will make Turin's Scuola Holden a beacon of hope (Lizzy Davies, 20 Jun 2013, The Guardian)
    -WIKIPEDIA: Silk (novel)
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    -ESSAY: A City as the Key to Interpreting a Novel by Alessandro Baricco (Diana Njegovan, Borders and Crossings)
    -ARCHIVES: "Baricco, Alessandro, 1958-" (Internet Archive)
    -REVIEW: of Silk (Ru Freeman, NPR)
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    -REVIEW: of City by Alessandro Baricco (Leo Benedictus, The Guardian)
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    -REVIEW: of The Story of Don Juan by Alessandro Baricco (The Guardian)
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    -REVIEW: of Without Blood by Alessando Baricco (Stephanie Merritt, The Guardian)
    -REVIEW: of Novecento by Alessandro Baricco (The Modern Novel)
    -REVIEW: of An Iliad by Alessandro Baricco (Ranjit Bolt, The Guardian)
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