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.

Starred review from December 15, 2018
Shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, the latest from South Korean author Kang (Human Acts, 2017) is a grieving woman's rumination on things that are white, in titled fragments. The unnamed narrator moves to a different country for the winter and mourns the girl her mother gave birth to before her, an infant that died only a few hours after birth. In White City, she passes through a town that had been obliterated by Nazis for attempting to fight back. In Ashes, she meditates on the mysterious calm of death and the struggle of life, the highs and lows only the living experience. In Salt, she realizes that in life, one has the power to heal, preserve, and endure. And in Your Eyes, the narrator contemplates how her sister's death allowed her to live?if the infant had survived, she would have never been born. Through these beautifully crafted snapshots, Kang uses language to attempt to transcend the different stages of grief and pain. She explores the dichotomies of black and white, life and death, and the pristine and tragic symbolism that runs between them. Kang's masterful voice is captivating and nothing short of brilliant.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

White, not black, is the color of mourning in Han's home country of South Korea, as well as other parts of Asia. This latest from Han, whose The Vegetarian was the 2016 Man Booker International Prize winner, is a meditative exploration of the limitless meanings of white--from blankness, erasure, and death to newness, purity, and possibility. Han further condenses her signature brevity, eschewing narrative prose for lists, verses, even fragments. The sparse story that emerges is a writer's journey to an unnamed city (geographical hints include Nazis, destruction, resistance, and rebirth), where she recalls and reimagines an older sister she never knew, her mother's premature first child, who died within hours of birth. Using white objects as connecting leitmotifs, she shifts between time and place, between documenting city explorations and remembering her childhood into adulthood (because she lived). Never far away is her lost sister, her primary companion, whom she exhorts, "Don't die. Live"--at least on the page--even as she realizes that her sister's survival would have erased her own existence. VERDICT With eloquence and grace, Han breathes life into loss and fills the emptiness with this new work, a Man Booker International short-lister fluidly Anglophoned by Han's three-time collaborator Smith. [See Prepub Alert, 8/13/18.]--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC