Spinning Silk – T. Cook

 

This was the way with spiders. How were they always willing to begin building again, knowing full well their work would not last – no matter how laboriously, how painstakingly they had produced it?
This was resilience.

Summary
Suri, a young girl, abandoned at birth, grew up in a household that did not like having yet another mouth to feed. Even her incredible strength and dexterity were not enough to convince the people who raised her to not sell her into slavery. But living with her master, however cruel, showed her one thing – she is an adept silk-weaver.

Writing
The writing in this book is beautiful. It’s very flowery and lyrical, at times it feels more like a poetry than prose. It creates a very delicate, ethereal atmosphere.

The most peculiar thing about this book is the fact that it doesn’t feel like a book at all. More like a story told by the campfire by your beloved friend. I just simply couldn’t get enough of it.

Characters
The characters in this book are very, very strange. Even though I found myself caring about them, I still think that they are very underdeveloped. Their actions never actually made sense to me, because I haven’t really got to know them that well. Not in a way I am supposed to know the character I am reading about.

Oh, also a friendly warning – there is a lot of spiders in this book. Much more than I am comfortable with. So if you are a fellow arachnophobe – consider yourself warned.

Plot
Generally I am not a big fan of books with an omniscient narrator, but in this case it works wonderfully. I actually think that it’s the only thing that kept me interested, when things started to get too confusing for me. The narrator creates incredible suspense in all the right moments, almost like they could feel when the reader starts to lose interest. It makes you want to keep reading even if you are not entirely sure what is going on.

However, the worst thing about this story is that it doesn’t really have a purpose, until the very, very end. There is actually a lot of things happening, but more often than not I found myself asking “what is this book even about?”.

Overall
I think it’s the strangest book I have ever read. On one hand – it really managed to captivate me. But on the other I am really not sure if I know what I read. Though I am aware that my confusion may be coming from a place of ignorance – I am not familiar with Japanese folklore. At all.

Still, I can’t help but wonder – is it really my fault for not fully understanding the story? Or is it the book’s?

 

Content warnings: violence and abuse, rape attempt, self-hatred, slavery

 

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

 

 

You can find this book on Goodreads