Title: The White Book

Author: Han Kang

Genre: Semi-Autobiographical Novel, Psychological Fiction, Contemporary

Rating: 5/5

The White Book is Han Kang’s reflective, methodical breakdown of past events and memories that plague her present. 

From nights spent lying in a sliver of moonlight, time sought to ponder devotedly on what life could have been had it not been her own, instead envisioning handing it to a sister whom she barely knew. This book dreams of death, exploring the dark corners of her mind and coming to terms with emotions and experiences that have hung over her for a lifetime—it is a cleansing, a catalyst of white.

It is an inherently personal piece of literature, to have her memory meditatively written in a myriad of short chapters. Each chapter feels as if it is a tribute to her heritage—to the places that she has been, and to the life that she has experienced and is still continuing to. 

Though to others, her words would seem difficult to understand with such a personal touch, they still manage to touch on a viscerally deep human emotions—of pain, of longing to understand—that resides somewhere deep within oneself. Above all, Kang’s writing is thoughtful and purposeful. This novel, especially, reads like a literary embodiment of growth with every phrase and sentence holding an almost oppressive weight to it—evocatively human in emotion. 

And where else could all this love go?

Not many realize it, but one does get a lifetime to feel everything that the waking life has to offer. This book is a reflection of death and the fruits of its consequences. Kang reflects on the brief life of her eldest sister—barely alive for no more than two hours—clinging only to her mother’s warmth and whispers to stay awake. She also briefly referred to an older brother who also succumbed to a premature death. The realization that her sister’s short life will always be an integral part of her life and her story reverberated throughout. 

How could one truly move on knowing that in place of your life, another has been taken? The color white embodies the essence of purity, yet in Korea—the author’s homeland—it is a symbol of mourning. It mirrors that paradoxical nature of death. Without this expiration date set among every living thing, it could easily be glossed over, taken for granted, or never appreciated. It is a tragedy from which gratitude soon grew—an understanding—that this specific end in her sister’s life is what subconsciously shaped the steps that she had been taking, both in the novel and in real life. 

To know life, one must feel the inevitability of loss.

Of senses and memory

Memory, a frequent theme in The White Book, is a ferocious reminder that Kang invites one to sit down and linger in that in-between—in its whiteness, a state of perpetuity. It calls upon such sensations as the familiar scent that the wind carries that smells vaguely of home, the urgent whispers of a mother’s voice, or the simple melting of a snowflake on one’s shoulder. The presence of someone, or something, can never be truly erased—it is an active act to remember, to allow oneself to be immersed in every which way. It is a haunting in itself, such is embedded into each symbol of whiteness in the prose that is nestled into the pages.

The novel alludes to the author’s time spent in Warsaw—the remembrance of a war-torn city during World War II. Along the brief chapters and lingering memorials, she has managed to sew together a certain connection of fates between her sister and this newfound city that she found herself residing in—who had at one time died or been destroyed and the way in which her own life and is in some ways built on the broken pediment of the her life, in the same ways Warsaw is now built on the ruin of its former self. 

Kang builds an ethereal energy into her descriptions of the landscape of Warsaw, a contrast to the history and point of view from which the narrator experiences this intertwining of recollections. The act of noticing the oldened structures that lie rest beneath shiny, new reconstructs of the past—cover-ups, fakes, she says. 

But these palimpsests of the pasts that redirect fate into a new direction are what death intends to relay towards those who suffered its grasp. It is a destiny, no matter how unfair and fake it feels, as is written and alluded to by how the narrator sees these buildings.

It is an opportunity to reflect and know that it is an unfortunate fact of being human. It is what makes fleeting moments worth remembering and staying around for. It defines being alive. Grief can shape almost all aspects of identity. One is both sorrow and joy. As much as The White Book lingers on the facets of passing and the crushing guilt of being a counter-product of such, it whispers its message loud and clear to the readers.

And that is to live. Despite the ghosts draped in white, those that linger in the moonlight and white nights—live.

The White Book is sold physically in Fully Booked. It is also available online through Shopee and Lazada.