Silk (Baricco) - Discussion Questions

Discussion Questions 
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Silk:

1. Explore the underlying symbolism of the silkworms and metamorphosis—opening of the eggs, feeding, cocooning, and spinning 1,000 yards of thread.

2. The narrator describes Joncour as a man who witnesses his life rather than lives it. What is meant by that? How will that change during the story? Or will it?

3. Silk ponders the sorrow of finding love in far off places and the difficulty of keeping desire alive in marriage. Talk about how this conflict gets played out in the novella—and in our own lives.

4. The book explores the difference between imaginary life and life lived day-to-day. Which is more real to Joncour?

5. Why does Joncour build the garden? What compensation does it offer him? What might the garden suggest about the larger role of art in our lives?

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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