‘The White Book’ by Han Kang is a book filled with the personal experience of grief, loss, and endurance.

Told in a number of short chapters named after mostly white objects, like snow, moon, rice, etc. we meet an unknown woman. She tells of the death of her older sister shortly after her birth. The story is told in a fragmented way and the color white is woven throughout. The loss lasts a lifetime for this family and yet they go on.

The book is a deliberately paced novel that almost urges the reader to slow down and savor the prose. The structure feels like a meditation. It is not for everyone, but should reward those looking for a quiet book about loss.

Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read and review this ARC. Full review to be found on Goodreads and on my website.

I absolutely adore everything Han Kang does but I will admit this wasn't quite what I expected. It was a very enjoyable read and I was able to get through it in one sitting but it lacked the complication and intricate emotions that I normally expect from her writing.

A lovely, spare volume of pieces, all related to images of white, from swaddling clothes, to burial cloth.

“My hands are of your color, it I shame to wear a heart so white.” —Macbeth

In Javier Marias’s Book A Heart So White, he uses this Shakespeare quote as a jumping off point to discuss translation and meaning. How do you choose the word in another language that truly reflects the meaning.

In Han Kang’s, The White Book, she plays with the same concepts of meaning, but also memory. Each section is triggered by the use of white. Fog, rice cakes, new born gown, breast milk are all triggers that center around a tragic incident. The author ponders if her mother did not lose her first child, would she even exist?

“I think of her coming here instead of me.”

Beautiful poetic pose that tell a tragic tale.

The White Book is so difficult to describe yet so lovely. It's a minimalist meditation on various white things (a city, a wave, a laugh...) that evoke loss and the fact that "nothing is eternal." It reminded me a bit of Ru, but it seemed to have less of an overarching tale to link the vignettes. I enjoyed many of the very brief passages made me pause, although some left only fleeting impressions.

Thanks to the author, Crown Publishing, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy in exchange for a review.

Reading this alongside the original Korean version was very interesting. The story was deep and powerful and the translation, although not quite a direct translation, conveyed the meaning and feeling with beautifully written English. A powerful book, highly recommended.

This was a beautifully written book. I never thought about all the different things that are white before. There was a lot of sorrow. I loved the language but had a hard time connecting all the little stories.

This is book that needs to be savored. It looks a white things in the narrators life, such as a door, and expects to be transformed by it. A beautiful read.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

Such a difficult book to describe, difficult to review. A very unconventional narrative, but the writing is just gorgeous. Sad at times, a reflection on the sister that she never knew using the color white. Descriptions of the feelings these things invoke, politics, reminders of the past, present. Meaningful. Things that make one ponder, ask questions.

Lace curtain. "Is it because of some billowing whiteness within us, unsullied, inviolate, that our encounters with objects so pristine never fail to leave us moved?"

Breath cloud. "On cold mornings,chat first White cloud of escaping breath is proof that we are living. Proof of our bodies warmth."

Handkerchief. "A single handkerchief drifted down, slowest of all, finally to the ground. Like a bird with it's wings half furled. Like a soul tentatively sounding out a place it might alight."

Each item is followed by a descriptive meaning, all beautiful. One could literally find special quotes everywhere. A book to savour.

I don’t know how to classify this fascinating work by author Han Kang; it lies somewhere between poetry, lyricism and short story. It is as ethereal as the white subjects described within; as fleeting as the short lives of the premature babies she mourns. It is well-worth reading and not easily forgotten. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

First published in South Korea in 2016; published in translation in Great Britain in 2017; published by Crown/Hogarth on February 19, 2019

The unnamed narrator of The White Book decides to write about white things, expecting to be transformed by the experience. Most chapters of The White Book revolve around a white item on the list. The white door on an apartment she rented. Rice cakes before they are steamed. A handkerchief falling from a balcony rail. The Korean phrase “laughing whitely,” meaning cheerless or forced laughter. Frost that causes leaves to fall from trees, “incrementally lightening their burden.” The chapters are short, sometimes only a single paragraph. A couple of sections are written in verse.

The narrator associates some of the white objects with “oppressive fragments of memory” that “constantly drift to the surface” as she walks the streets of a bleak and unfamiliar city (presumably Warsaw) that is cloaked in white fog. She has seen footage taken by American aircraft showing how the rubble of the bombed city looked like white snow.

Sugar cubes remind the narrator of her of her childhood. From her mother, she learned of the white newborn gown that was used during the premature birth of her mother’s first baby. The baby died after two hours and the birthing gown became a white burial shroud. She imagines her mother’s white breast milk that the baby will never consume. Had that death not occurred, the narrator would not have been born. For that reason and others, the narrator is living a haunted life.

To some extent, The White Book is a meditation on color and light: the way objects in the dark may appear as a hazy white glow; the way the moon can be bright white or pale blue or mottled; the way a stage becomes an island of white light surrounded by a dark sea. It is also a meditation on culture. The narrator spreads a white skirt on her mother’s grave and burns it, white smoke ascending so that her mother’s spirit will be able to wear it. She performs the ritual while wondering whether anyone believes in its literal truth, but appreciates the silent solemnity of the act.

Some topics suggest the transitory and impermanent nature of all things: pristine snow that darkens with a city’s grime or mutely disappears; waves that become “dazzlingly white” before shattering in “a spray of white:” a white dog that sickens and dies; sturdy white bones that shatter and turn to sand; the ash of a cremated body; the white hair of lovers who will soon part from each other forever. Small white pills ease pain, impeding the body’s progress toward the white light that is said to be death. Yet sugar cubes remind her of her childhood, memories that “remain inviolate to the ravages of time,” evidence that time and suffering do not bring everything to ruin.

We come to understand that the narrator has suffered losses, including a lost love that makes her fearful of loving again, and that she was once on the brink of suicide, but now holds those thoughts in reserve. She is surrounded by dreariness but also delicacy — a white butterfly, white reeds growing in a marsh — and that balance between light and dark is one that could change at any moment, in either direction. Through abstract associations of light and whiteness, The White Book portrays a woman who has lived on the edge between life and death, but who is slowly reconstructing herself, as the city to which she has traveled is still reconstructing itself after the bombings that failed to destroy it completely.

Fragmented storytelling risks a loss of the narrative cohesion upon which readers depend to help them find a story’s meaning. Han Kang wields the form with great skill, allowing meaning to coalesce as the fragments accumulate. If the story is sometimes depressing, it is ultimately uplifting, and the prose (for which the translator, Deborah Smith, presumably deserves some credit) is always exquisite.

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I think I would have liked this better if I’d read it slower and savored it. Maybe I read it too quickly for it to make sense. Kang is a beautiful writer, but ultimately the short ruminations on white things — gauze, rice, snow — didn’t come together quite right for me. They are appropriately cohesive, in a lyric essay kind of way, but I’m not sure walking away I really know what I just read or what the sections meant to one another as a whole. I appreciated beautiful turns of phrase and observations, even longer moments, but the work as a whole didn’t quite make sense to me.

Minimalist and super literary. For readers who love holding an idea in the light and examining it, but not for those wanting story or plot (or really even characters?).

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Kang has put together such a beautiful collection of prose poetry. I immediately added this to my "emotional rereads" pile for the next time I feel ready for an expansive and enveloping white.

Beautifully written. Very short, but beautifully written. Momentary fragments build into a story about mortality and the color white. Crossing genres of poetry, memoir and fiction, each fragment finds structure in something white that hints at mortality. Lacking a traditional storyline each moment reveals impressions of an underlying story, the story of the narrator’s older sister’s very brief life, and how her very tangible absence weighed on her family and the narrator.

Stark. The White Book reads more like poetry than prose, but in a way that speaks to my prose-loving heart. Kang reflects on the white things around her as she investigates what the death of her infant sister who lived and died before she was born means for her and her own life. It's a book that slips by like crystals of salt between your finger leaving behind the gritty sensation after you put it down.

The White Book is unlike anything I've ever read, The Vegetarian included. There is no real plot, but I was still hooked. Kang explores like in wake of her sister's death as a baby, many years later, fixating on white. It is a stunning read.

The narrator of this book doesn’t have a name in the book, although it’s no secret that this is an autobiographical work by this author and is a love letter to her long deceased older sister. The book starts with a list of white items, including swaddling bands, newborn gown, snow, ice and shroud. This book is a series of very short chapters consisting of meditation-like bursts of thoughts. Running through these thoughts is the story of the author’s young mother whose first child died only a couple of hours after birth. Throughout the years, the author has often thought of her sister and the grief that has never ended for her family.

The author not only writes about her sister’s death and the subsequent grief that death imposed upon her family but also writes in such beautiful detail of her sister’s two hours of life. I think one of the most touching parts of the book is when the author speaks directly to her sister, telling her how much she would have loved having a big sister.

This book has been short listed for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize and I can certainly understand why. Ms. Kang never fails to impress with the uniqueness of her work. “The Vegetarian” and “Human Acts” are both books that I will never forget and wrench my heart just thinking about them. I know that her newest book will be one that I will pick up again and will open randomly just to enjoy reading one of these lovely ruminations. I read a review that referred to the author’s short chapters as prayers and I think that is totally appropriate.

Most highly recommended.

The color white in Korea has several of the same traditional meanings as it does in the West -- purity and truth being the two most obvious. White also signifies life as Koreans refer to themselves as "White clad folk." White also represents the cardinal direction of West and the element of metal. Kang goes more in-depth in her tribute to the color.

White is the pure snow and ice, and that can also be a negative -- a father lost in the Himalayas, the frost and ice that limit life. White can be the look of death as well as life in the form of breast milk. It can be vast as the Milky Way or as small as the glimmer of metal. Kang seems to bring out the darker side of white. It can hide but not correct imperfections. It is the color of light and also the color of the ashes of a loved one. It can also be the simple joys of a passing cloud or the moon in the sky.

Kang plays a tribute to a color that has well defined traditional meanings in western society. It also has contemporary definitions of plain, "white bread," the dread of winter. The color is present in all things, and especially in Kang's view, it has a close association with death. The writing is near poetic at times and haunting at others. The White Book defies categorization and does not sit well in any pigeon hole. Perhaps a bit experimental in concept but executed well in practice as themes run through the collection forming links to some topics and isolating others. An interesting collection of short essays and near poems.

I loved this strange but beautiful little book—a meditation on whiteness but also grief and memory. Korean author Han Kang starts out by listing 15 white things, which she then examines (along with many other white items) in one or two page chapters. “If I sift those words through myself, sentences will shiver out, like the strange, sad shriek the bow draws from a metal string, “ Kang writes. “Could I let myself hide between these sentences, veiled with white gauze?”

Kang doesn’t hide, however; she slowly reveals herself as her sentences “shiver out,” sharing her grief over the death of an older sister (white being the color of mourning), who lived for only two hours following a premature birth. The painful legacy of this tragedy, introduced in the chapters “Swaddling Bands” and “Newborn Gown,” lingers throughout the entire book, revealing itself in the words and imagery of entries such as “Moon,” “Handkerchief,” “Spirit,” and—most movingly for me—“Onni.”

Kang entwines these memories of her personal grief with musings on Warsaw—a city forged by its own tragic past—where she chooses to live while writing the book. In chapters such as “Frost,” “Sleet,” and “Snow,” Kang depicts the whiteness of a Warsaw winter in some of the most beautifully poetic writing on the season I have ever read, and weaves the symbolism of winter as death into her own story.

This book is probably not for everyone—there’s no plot, dialogue or real characters to speak of. Kang’s gorgeous writing is the centerpiece; I won’t spoil it for anyone else by quoting sections here, since you should encounter it for yourself—I highlighted practically half the book. Mesmerizing, achingly moving and highly recommended; read it in one sitting if at all possible.

Many thanks to Hogarth/Crown and NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this book in return for my honest review.