Silk by Alessandro Baricco

The recent 24 Hour Read-a-Thon, provided the opportunity to read a bunch of shorter novels, and this was one of them. Translated in to English from the original Italian, it also completes the Orbis Terrarum challenge for me.

The year is 1861. Hervé Joncour is a French merchant of silkworms, who combs the known world for their gemlike eggs. Then circumstances compel him to travel farther, beyond the edge of the known, to a country legendary for the quality of its silk and its hostility to foreigners: Japan.

There Joncour meets a woman. They do not touch; they do not even speak. And he cannot read the note she sends him until he has returned to his own country. But in the moment he does, Joncour is possessed.

This is a very short but wonderful read, which surprised me somewhat.

Told in short, often repetitive chapters, Baricco’s sparce and elegant writing - even in translation - has a real lyrical quality to it.

What you end up with is, a beautiful and haunting (though not necessarily happy) musing on the meaning of love.

It is, a quick read, but not one I think you’ll rush through, you’ll want to take your time and savour what you are reading.

Rating:

Buy,  Silk, from Amazon.

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Sky Burial - Xinran

In the interests of honesty I should admit, the only reason I picked up this book to read was the A to Z Challenge, because, well, they’re not that many authors out the whose names start with “X” are there!

It’s not to say I didn’t want to read the book, I’m not going to choose to read a book “just because” it’ll help out with a challenge, there still needs to be that “read me” element in there, somewhere.

I do vaguely remember the book first coming out and receiving decent reviews, so as it looked interesting, and as I say, hey it’s an “X” author, so why not?

This is where these challenge things really come into their own, bringing books into your life that for what ever reason would normally pass you by.

And that is the case with Sky Burial, I read the book over four or five days traveling to work and back, and it was wonderful step out my the modern Western world, to immerse myself in to Tibetan life and Wen’s search for the 20 minutes or so trip takes each way.

The story is a simple one: Shu Wen meets her intelligent, idealistic husband-to-be while they are both training to be doctors. After less than 100 days of marriage, Kejun travels to Tibet as a Chinese army doctor and before long, Shu Wen is notified that he has died in an “incident”. Shu Wen decides to join the army herself, travel to Tibet and find out if he really is dead, and if so, how and why he died.

And then, as if travelling to a closed country like Tibet as a young woman in the 1950s is not difficult enough, Shuwen quickly becomes separated from her unit and, close to death herself, is taken in by a family of Tibetan nomads. Her transformation from Chinese doctor to nomadic Buddhist is a long, painful and at many turns, deeply distressing one.

Beautifully written, you’ll lose all sense of time (just like Wen whose search spans 30 years), this is a story that will worm it’s way under your skin and its magic will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

I suspect that many (okay, many fellow men ) will be put off by the phrase “love story” in the strapline, which is a shame, because this isn’t really a romance story, it is really is, a love story of the country and people of Tibet and the different lives they lead.

Rating:

Buy Sky Burial at Amazon

Other Reviews:

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