This comes across as a series of meditations on things that are white, written as vignettes in probing and poignant language you could call prose poetry. I was delighted with the majority of more than 60 pieces, most 1-2 pages long, as wonderful play with metaphors of white. But I was also drawn past delight to accommodation to dark and melancholy paths. The narrator, reflecting back from elderly years, is sharing how she comes to terms with many sources of suffering through the power of language. We get little nuggets suggesting hard life during the Korean War and sources of grief like her mother’s loss of a prematurely born sibling. The collection includes wintry pieces on frost, snow, sleet, and fog, the austerity of the moon, and moonlight, the blank exuberance of white flowers and white butterflies, the apparent spiritual messages carried by white birds, the primal memories of white sugar cubes and white rice cake, the monotone of white shrouds and death residue of bones and ashes.

To give you a chance to experience the craft of this poetic mind, I share a complete one of these little personal essays/prose poems:

<i><b>Sugar Cubes</b>
She was around ten years old at the time. Her first outing to a coffee shop, accompanied by her aunt, was also the first time she set eyes on sugar cubes. Those squares wrapped in white paper possessed an almost unerring perfection, surely too perfect for her. She peeled the paper carefully off and brushed a finger over that granular surface. She crumbled a corner, touched it to her tongue, nibbled at that dizzying sweetness, then eventually placed it in a cup of water and sighed as she watched it melt away.
She isn’t really partial to sweet things anymore, but the sight of a dish of wrapped sugar cubes still evokes the sense of witnessing something precious. There are certain memories that remain inviolate to the ravages of time. And to those of suffering. It is not true that everything is colored by time and suffering. It is not true that they bring everything to ruin.</i>

I was prepared not to like this collection due to my sense that framing them on whiteness was just too arbitrary. But my inspiration and emotional impact from these pieces was quite high. I didn’t quite get the pleasure I had from a recent 5-star reading experience with William Gass’ [book:On Being Blue|156185] (alas unreviewed).

This was such a gorgeous little book, full of beautiful, poetic observations told a bit like vignettes, and a bit like prose poetry. There was some woven connections between "tales," but mostly they stand up alone as astute philosophical and personal contemplations. I was especially moved by Kang's descriptions of natural phenomenon - "Fog," "Frost," "Snow," "Wave," "Milky Way" - were all gorgeous. "Handkerchief" and "Your eyes" also resonated especially with me. I highlighted many parts for myself, but to share quotes here feels like it would be robbing potential readers of the beauty of discovering these gems themselves. This book took me about an hour to read, and I encourage anyone with the time to sit with this book and let it wash over you.

This is quite an intriguing book. It’s so very different from her previous works and while I don’t think that it’s a book that all would appreciate due to its unconventional narrative style, for those who are willing to engage with the material it is worth it.

A short volume of descriptions of white objects and how they represent birth, life and death from the Author of The Vegetarian. A Young woman gives birth to a premature baby. Two college students die. A marriage. Snow, paper, smoke, butterflies all white. Lyrical and unpredictable.


Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley.

This is a beautiful collection of small musings/poems written by an author that relate to the word "white". Many of them relate to her memories around the loss of a newborn sibling. This is a wonderful new book, and I'm happy to have received an ARC from the publisher.

This is the 3rd book I’ve read by Han Kang, a phenomenal contemporary Korean writer. ‘The Vegetarian’.....was fierce with haunting prose making it very hard to put down. It was gut-wrenching painful for me personally having survived the horrific years when our daughter was starving herself to death.....
Yet....I knew I was reading something brilliant. I became an instant fan of Han Kang.

The next book I read by this young exceptional author was ‘Human Acts’. It was brutal.... one that I continued to feel its depths long after I read it. Do you ever throw your hands up in the air - literary clueless in understanding why people are cruel, mean, cold hearted TO YOU?.......well....take it 1,000 steps more....
Why do we have such extreme violence in the world? Bloody frightening riots - killing hundreds of people at a time. Han wrote about how a single event changed a nation in South Korea.

Both books were devastatingly powerful - literary masterpieces about humanity.

“The White Book” ....is equally a masterpiece- one that possibly took more courage to write than her first two books....given she is blood related to this story.
Note....”The White Book” ‘does’ tell a story ....but is not written in the traditional way a novel is. Han reflects on her list of white things in short chapters, ( and inserts other relating topics), .... telling a story - from personal history - imagination, loss, grief, hope, human fragility, and love.

At the start Han says, “In the spring, when I decided to write about white things, the first thing I did was make a list”:
Swaddling bands
Newborn gown
Salt
Snow
Ice
Moon
Rice
Waves
Yulan
White Bird
“Laughing whitely”
Blank paper
White Dog
White Hair
Shroud
“With each item I wrote down, a ripple of agitation ran through me. I felt that yes, I needed to write this book and the process of writing it would be transformative,
would itself transform into something like white ointment applied to a swelling, like gauze laid over a wound. Something I needed.

Han’s hopes in writing this book was to be “transformative”. It’s a story that is part of her personal history.
It was definitely transformative to me. I looked at life and death in ways I haven’t before. Han opens a new pathway in which to examine life and death - past history and how it shapes our current and future selves.

Starting with the title of this book: “The White Book”.....
I began this book by sitting for 10 minutes -meditating - simply preparing myself to open a Han Kang book.
I wondered about the title....”what might it mean to Han?” ( I’ve learned a little from the 3 books by Han: the titles of her books are ALWAYS POWERFUL with much more depth than first glance. So I wondered....”why white things”?

The word *WHITE* in western cultures symbolizes purity, elegance, peace, and cleanliness; brides traditionally wear white dresses at their weddings. But in China, Korea, and some Asian countries white represents ‘death’, ‘morning’, and ‘bad luck’, and is traditionally worn at funerals.

I honestly will never EVER think of a newborn’s birth- their LIFE - if they should die soon after birth - the same again - EVER - AFTER READING THIS BOOK!
I know women who gave birth - and their baby died just hours after their birth. ALL I saw ( which wasn’t it enough?), was the immediate grief. I saw something else which Han presented. She shifted my thoughts about an early death. Still morning - still deep sadness from the sudden death...but what difference does this short life bring to others? I kept reading - and my mind expanded.

In Han’s book - we learn that a 22 year mother gives birth to a premature baby girl. She is dead in two hours. From there - as I continued reading - I began to look how this baby girl’s life - for two hours- spoke to Han [the inspiration for this book comes from true events in Han’s life] ....
at some point.....”it occurred to me that if I had been similarity visited myself, by my mothers first child who had lived just two hours, I would have been utterly oblivious.
Because the girl had never learn language at all. For an hour her eyes opened, held them in The direction of our mother’s face, but her optic nerves never had time to awaken and so that face had remained beyond reach. For her, there would have been only a voice, ( the mother’s voice of grief), >....’DON’T DIE. FOR GOD’S SAKE DON’T DIE’. Unintelligible words, the only words she was ever to hear”.

More memories.... The year after the mother lost her first child, she had another premature baby.
“Had those lives made it safely past the point of crisis, my own birth, which followed three years later, and that of my brother four years after, would not have come about”.
“This life needed only one of us to live it. If you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now. My life means yours is impossible. Only in the gap between darkness and light, only in that blue-tinged breach, do we manage to make out each other’s faces”.

The narrator was vitality aware of walking side by side with her sister. The sister she never knew - the sister she wished for - the sister who the narrator loved. They shared a profound unspoken language together.
YOUR EYES
“ I saw differently when I looked through your eyes. I walked differently when I walked with your body. I wanted to show you clean things. Before brutality, sadness, despair, pain, clean things were only for you, clean things above all. But I didn’t come off as I intended. Again and again I peered into your eyes, as though searching for form in a deep, black mirror”.

There are other short stories - about a dog, a white butterfly, a white bird, wild ducks, university classmates who had studied literature together , ( their death), ....and their life - rejuvenation, revivification and White Flowers .....
“The brief March blooming of two yulans”. Touching story.

Another achingly beautiful book, by Han Kang, ( A woman I wish was my own sister), with it’s ‘new-ways-of-looking-at-life-and-death’, .....will stay with me for a long time.

Grateful to be offered an advance copy by Crown Publishing, Netgalley, and Han Kang

This was fantastic, engaging, and had eerie elements. So far this was my favorite book that Han Kang as published, and while previous works were not something I enjoyed, I was intrigued by the premise of this book and so glad that I requested it because it is well crafted and excellently written.

This is a short work that begins with a list of white things. Han Kang then goes on to describe these things using a pen, that only she could, to evoke passion, humanity, empathy, memory, and many other feelings simply using descriptive language. Different from anything else I have read, and I am sure too much of it went over my head. Nevertheless I would certainly recommend to fans of her previous work, and anyone interested in becoming a writer. Thank you to the publisher for providing me with this arc available through netgalley.

This genre-bending novel purports to be a series of writings about things that are white. And, in fact, the writings are all brief and poetic. But the three parts of this novel tell the story of a twin, born before the narrator, who died shortly after being born. At times, this book reads like a personal memoir or diary, at times, like poems. There is a dreamlike quality to the writing and both the subject and form seem, like in Kang's earlier work The Vegetarian, subversive. It's a quiet and thoughtful novel. One sure to bring accolades.

The book is very different from Han Kang’s other works. There is much reflection on the death of her older sister two hours after she was born. The White Book is written in short meditations of how different words for evoke the meaning and feeling of white for Han Kang while weaving through the narrative of her sister’s early death.

I have not read Han Kang's first English-translated novel, "The Vegetarian", but I am familiar with the highbrow concept of the book. In the same vein, "The White Book" is a book with a creative concept, but handles it in a quiet manner. The book follows a nameless narrator (assuming the author herself) who initially makes a list of white items, but each chapter (in brief, poetic prose) examines a different white object and how it affected the author's life I felt like I was in a dreamlike fugue state while reading this book. It's very short, but impactful. It was a short read and changed the way that I thought about inanimate objects and how they can be triggering based on one's experience.

I received this book in exchange for a review from the publisher.

The White Book
By Han Kang
Translated from Korean by Deborah Smith
pub date 2-19-19
Hogarth/Crown publishing

An introspective and fascinating collection of poems, written during Han Kang's visit to to Warsaw, seeing the war torn streets, remnants of the Second World War. It rekindles memories of the story of her older sister, who died in her mother's arms 2 hours after birth, and many other memories from her childhood.
Han Kang's hauntingly beautiful prose uses her life story as a an artist might fill a canvas-white with purity and goodness-whose shading adds much more perspective and depth than color. This is an unedited version of the book but I do hope all that I read is kept. It's amazing.
Favorites were:
Door
White City
Certain objects in darkness
wave
white dog
yulan.
Lace Curtain and Incandescent Bulb were my most favorite.

Thank you Crown Publishing and Netgalley for the pre-pub access.

Two years ago, my book club picked THE VEGETARIAN by Han Kang to read. I didn't know what to expect, and honestly that book blew my mind. I'd read nothing else like it before or since, and am still on the fence about recommending it to others.

When I saw this was soon to be released, I was immediately interested. Once again, I have been blown away and it was not what I expected. This book is poetic fiction, full of lyrics and loneliness, emptiness and grief. It was beautiful and I definitely recommend others should read it.

In her newest English release, The White Book, Han Kang presents social and political commentary within the whispers of a few moments, but she calls the reader into an act of collective storytelling by forcing us to fill in the spaces she creates with her pregnant outlines of white and dark, a chiaroscuro that begs the reader to color over the scenes with our own experiences.
In the book, that is part fiction and part memoir-in verse, the young Korean author is visiting the Polish city of Warsaw and planning out the book that she will write to contain her experiences, yet she places this new life within the context of an unknown past, recalling stories she was told about the children her mother had before she was born, paying homage to the sister that she wish she could have shared memories with, yet acknowledging that if her sister's journey had continued, Kang's live would never have been created. So she aches for something that would hinder her ability to ache and in this paradox of blankness that begs to be filled, she describes the whiteness, that is both void and fulfillment.
I loved the lyricism of Kang's sentences and the way she can spin a story with a barely perceptible thread, but I thought that she could have done more with the outline, could've given me more. I wanted more. In the scenario Kang relates of her mother nursing her firstborn, the baby who died within a couple of hours, she writes of the command the fearful mother issues to the newborn, Don't die. Decade later, Han Kang in turn, winds those words around many other vulnerable parts of life, much the way a baby is swaddled to mimic the comfort the womb provides. Don't die. Live. It is her refrain for life, echoed in her whitewashing a rusted door to give it new life with a coat of paint, describing an art gallery that lives inside the walls of a hospital where many died during the war. Kang juxtaposes life and death expertly, and these minimalistic pages narrate pain with such rasping quality that I ached for more of it.