White Book

Fionnáin reviewed White Book by Han Kang

These Pages

4 stars

The White Book is both a gorgeous, touching, spacious artwork and a poetic, personal journey. It comprises short vignettes, none more than three pages long in the English translation, all contemplations on the colour white and its resonance with the tragedy of the author/narrator's older sister, who died hours after her birth.

Even with the tragic content, the book retains a sense of the joy about the unlikely beauty of living in this world. The short chapters are occasionally punctuated by photographs that are themselves wonderful moments. The finished object is contemplative, and its strength is in its minimalism, leaving ample space to consider Kang's lyrical writing.

sidra reviewed White Book by Han Kang

Review of 'White Book' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

"Standing at this border where land and water meet, watching the seemingly endless recurrence of the waves (though this eternity is in fact illusion: the earth will one day vanish, everything will one day vanish), the fact that our lives are no more than brief instants is felt with unequivocal clarity.
Each wave becomes dazzlingly white at the moment of its shattering. Farther out, the tranquil body of water flashes like the scales of innumerable fish. The glittering of multitudes is there. The shifting, stirring, tossing of multitudes. Nothing is eternal."

i don't even know how to review this. I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time now. i don't know if the translation does justice to the original work, it certainly did not dampen my enjoyment of the book. would 11/10 recommend. read it for the writing if not anything else.

"On cold mornings, that first …

"Standing at this border where land and water meet, watching the seemingly endless recurrence of the waves (though this eternity is in fact illusion: the earth will one day vanish, everything will one day vanish), the fact that our lives are no more than brief instants is felt with unequivocal clarity.
Each wave becomes dazzlingly white at the moment of its shattering. Farther out, the tranquil body of water flashes like the scales of innumerable fish. The glittering of multitudes is there. The shifting, stirring, tossing of multitudes. Nothing is eternal."

i don't even know how to review this. I'm going to be thinking about it for a long time now. i don't know if the translation does justice to the original work, it certainly did not dampen my enjoyment of the book. would 11/10 recommend. read it for the writing if not anything else.

"On cold mornings, that first white cloud of escaping breath is proof that we are living. Proof of our bodies’ warmth. Cold air rushes into dark lungs, soaks up the heat of our body, and is exhaled as perceptible form, white flecked with gray. Our lives’ miraculous diffusion, out into the empty air."

otrops reviewed White Book by Han Kang

Review of 'White Book' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

This is a book of fragments and connections, where the lives of two sisters who could never have met overlap. It is dreamlike and strange, yet grounded in the real world. Because the story is told in a series of fragments, the reader is left to fill in the gaps. By doing so, the reader becomes as much the author of these stories as Han Kang.

Michael @ Knowledge Lost reviewed White Book by Han Kang

Review of 'White Book' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Han Kang’s The White Book comes across as something different from this author’s Man Booker International Prize winner (The Vegetarian) but still feels very much the same. The White Book is a reflection of the colour White; part meditation, part poetry, Han Kang explores a range of connections with the colour. Weaving an autobiographical narrative, Kang is able to explore her feelings in this emotional book.

“At times my body feels like a prison, a solid, shifting island threading through the crowd. A sealed chamber carrying all the memories of the life I have lived, and the mother tongue from which they are inseparable. The more stubborn the isolation, the more vivid these unlooked-for fragments, the more oppressive their weight. So that it seems the place I flee to is not so much a city on the other side of the world as further into my own interior.”

When I …

Han Kang’s The White Book comes across as something different from this author’s Man Booker International Prize winner (The Vegetarian) but still feels very much the same. The White Book is a reflection of the colour White; part meditation, part poetry, Han Kang explores a range of connections with the colour. Weaving an autobiographical narrative, Kang is able to explore her feelings in this emotional book.

“At times my body feels like a prison, a solid, shifting island threading through the crowd. A sealed chamber carrying all the memories of the life I have lived, and the mother tongue from which they are inseparable. The more stubborn the isolation, the more vivid these unlooked-for fragments, the more oppressive their weight. So that it seems the place I flee to is not so much a city on the other side of the world as further into my own interior.”

When I think about these emotions, like grief and despair, I often then of the colour black. For Han Kang it is more “black waters shifting beneath the thick sea fog”. This fog is such an amazing metaphor, it is that looming cloud that shadows over our dark feelings. It is cold, if not chilling. The White Book, really challenged my thoughts on the colour white being warm and happy.

I like the way Han Kang was able to combine all her thoughts and emotions and associate it with the one colour. She led me on an emotional journey that was different to anything I have ever read. Yet, at the same time, it felt like her style and I cannot help but compare it to The Vegetarian. I would be interested to see if she is able to pull off something similar in the future, maybe with a different colour.

Despite the fact that I enjoyed the journey The White Book took me on, I do not think it is deserving of a place on the Man Booker International Prize shortlist. My main concern is that this blurs the line of fiction too much, this is an autobiographical meditation. While I appreciate everything it does, I wonder how it managed to meet the criteria for this prize. It is not just this book that blur the line between fiction and non-fiction, I just think this is one that is the furthest away from fiction. Having said that, this is a book that needs to be experienced rather than analysed; there is some literary merit here, but this is more an emotional journey.

This review originally appeared on my blog; www.knowledgelost.org/book-reviews/genre/poetry-genre/the-white-book-by-han-kang/