The White Book

Starred review from March 18, 2019
Far from a traditional novel in its presentation, the engrossing latest from Man Booker International winner Han (The Vegetarian) fills spare pages with sometimes poetic meditations on the possibilities of a life unlived. After traveling to Warsaw from South Korea and renting an apartment, Han’s unnamed narrator remembers the story of her parents’ first child, a girl who died shortly after birth. The narrator investigates her own grief regarding this child to conjure a possible alternate timeline wherein the baby lived. The narrator looks through the eyes of this new person, wandering the foreign city, observing the snowy season developing around her, and using objects like “Sleet,” “Salt,” and “Sugar cubes” as titles to anchor each section. The narrator crafts an entire life for this lost sister before turning her considerations inward, asking if she would have been conceived if the child had survived. Han breaks her narrative into three parts, “I,” “She,” and “All Whiteness,” and throughout writes with attention to the whiteness of the page. The second section, in particular, is wintery in presentation, with small blocks of black text floating atop swaths of blankness. Though thin on conventional narrative, the novel resonates as a prayer for the departed, and only gains power upon rereading.

This brief novel--shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize--is a haunting meditation on loss and memory, movingly narrated by Jennifer Kim. Even though the unnamed narrator of the story is a successful author, she reflects on her life and how aimless she has become. In many passages she ponders the color white--snow, an empty sheet of white paper, an infant's swaddling clothes. She believes this rootlessness began before her own birth, when an older sister died soon after being born, forcing the narrator to recognize that, if things had been different, she herself might never have existed. Kim's voice gives the story the immediacy of a recent loss but also the joy of finding a relationship, no matter how ephemeral, with the sister she never met. A rare treat for listeners. D.G.P. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine