The book is told in alternate chapters between the main story of you the Reader, and the chapters of books you are reading. In some bizarre out-of-this-world circumstances, trying to look for the right complete book, you keep getting different books, and unfinished ones at that.

The main story is very hard to summarize. It’s about books, readers, authors, publishing industry, translations, and banned books. There’s this passage at the first chapter that I’d love to share:

“In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:
the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages,
the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment,
the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case,
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.” ~ p 5-6

I believe a lot of you understand the experience above :)

There are some great parts and the idea of the book itself is just brilliant, but after a while I found it very exhausting to read as it opens a new chapter of a different book on and on. The book is only 254 pages but it took me ages to finish and it felt super long. The problem for me is, I find about the first quarter of any book is usually the most tiring, takes the most energy, and is probably least interesting — while for some people it’s probably the most exciting part. Therefore I found it exhausting to enter a new story, in fact a dozen of them, in one book. It probably works better for people who are fan of short stories. I admit that near the end I couldn’t pretend to care about the fragments of the stories that the Reader was reading anymore and started to speed read, as I know I wouldn’t see the end of them.

On the note of the translation, I have suspicion that the translation is not great. It’s often read like a technical book and quite dry at times.

I would recommend the book for people who like quirky books and short stories. I would like to read more Calvino’s in the future. Any that you’d highly recommend?

1979 (Italian) – 1981 (English), 254 pp

First line
“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.”

Last line
And you say, “Just a moment, I’ve almost finished If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.”

Challenge
Lost in Translation (book #5), Orbis Terrarum 2009 (book #10), (Another) 1% Well-Read (book #9), 1001 Books Before You Die, Reading the World

Also reviewed by
Liked it! – A Striped Armchair | Bending Bookshelf | Shelf Love | 3000 Books | A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook | books i done read | A Damned Conjuror | Booknotes by Lisa | Life and Times of a “New” New Yorker
Unsure? – Things Mean A Lot (probably the closest to my opinion)

Written in fable style, Silk tells a story of a silk merchant in southern France who is appointed by people in his vilage to make a long voyage to Japan in search of good quality of silkworms, as there’s an epidemic that ruins the regular supply of silkworms in their neighbourhood countries.

And so begins his long journey — which is comically told in a couple of paragraphs, back and forth every year from France to Japan. With every trip he gets a little more glimpse of a young woman that he meets in Japan — a concubine of the warlord he makes the business deal with. Meanwhile he has a wife who is ever so loyal waiting for him at home.

Without giving anything away, I bet you could already sense that where ever it’s going it’s not going to somewhere pretty.

Silk is a short and sweet novella with a tinge of sadness. It is a story about unhappiness in everyone of us, no matter what we already have.

It’s satisfying read for such a short book.

1996 (Italian), 1997 (English), 91 pp

Read for: Lost in Translation Challenge (book #3), Orbis Terrarum Challenge 2009 (book #9), (Another) 1% Well-Read Challenge (book #5), 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die Challenge, Reading the World

The Movie

Silk (2007)

Being the book-to-movie buff that I am, I couldn’t wait to check out the movie almost straight away.

The biggest difference with the book is that the girl in Japan is not a white girl as in the book, though she’s said to be Chinese in the movie, not Japanese too (in real life she is Japanese). I don’t know why this was made so, but I guess a Japanese chick in the poster and trailer would be a much better attraction (because then it’d be white chick vs Japanese chick kind of movie).

Positive points: gorgeous setting, pretty girls (I’m always fond of Keira Knightley and the Japanese girl was gorgeous).

Negative points: Michael Pitt as Hervé Joncour didn’t work well (who is he anyway? never heard of him before), the hairstyle of the Japanese girls looks very modern which didn’t go well with the 1800s setting.

The colorful birds that Hara Jubei (the Japanese warlord) is supposed to keep in his backyard was not portrayed in the movie. I guess that would cost quite a bit to do. But what a shame. It would have been a stunning shot. I remember the colorful birds clearly from the book because I thought it was a great symbol of the Japanese girl role as his concubine, his pet.

Somehow the story felt a bit more unsatisfactory by watching the film, even though it stays true to the book. The tale became the old obsession-with-what-you-can’t-have and it left me and hubby somewhat discontent.

Rating: 7/10

Book also reviewed by

Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? | A Striped Armchair | 1morechapter | Bart’s Bookshelf | Stuff as Dreams Are Made On | Big Book, Big Evil | Jules’ Book Reviews | Reading Matters