Silk by Alessandro Baricco

The short novel Silk by Alessandro Baricco is about a French merchant of silkworms who travels to Japan in search of the exotic country's legendary silk. There, he meets a woman whose spell enchants him long after he has returned to his own country. Silk is one of the most achingly beautiful books I've ever read, and I attribute this distinction to its many short chapters, and thus its many closing sentences.

What is it about the Final Sentence, bringing a chapter to a close, that holds more weight, more depth, and more power than the other sentences? The only other kind that comes even near to its heft is the Opening Sentence, but the Opening Sentence is a totally different animal--it is optimistic by nature, offering a taste of riches to come. The Final Sentence, however, has the ability to say so much more with so few words.

The book's entire first chapter:

     Although his father had pictured for him a brilliant future in the army, Hervé Joncour had ended up earning his crust in an unusual career which, by a singular piece of irony, was not unconnected with a charming side that bestowed on it a vaguely feminine intonation.
     Hervé Joncour bought and sold silkworms for a living.
     The year was 1861. Flaubert was writing Salammbô, electric light remained hypothetical, and Abraham Lincoln, beyond the Ocean, was fighting a war he was not to see the finish.
     Hervé Joncour was thirty-two.
     He bought and sold.
     Silkworms.

Whatever gravity a chapter’s Final Sentence may have, it is always the very last sentence, the one that ends the book, that quite literally has the final word and trumps all others. It is always my favorite moment in novels, the springboard from which the book launches me back into the world.

Occasionally, on windy days, he would go down to the lake and spend hours in contemplation of it because he seemed to descry, sketched out on the water, the inexplicable sight of his life as it had been, in all its lightness.

Silk by Alessandro Baricco

tags: books book reviews silkworms Alessandro Baricco