Title: The White Book (Goodreads)
Author: Han Kang
Translator: Deborah Smith
Published: Portobello Books, 2017
Pages: 161
Genres: Poetry
My Copy: eBook
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, Kindle, Wordery (or visit your local Indie bookstore)
Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2018
Longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2018
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.
I hear you.
I’m quite ok with authors blurring the line between fiction and NF, but a fiction prize is a fiction prize…
I don’t know how so many books that feel more like nonfiction made it into the longlist
Really enjoyed reading your thoughts on this! I personally really liked it, but I haven’t thought much about its placement on the prize list. I do have to agree with you though that this book barely fits the prize in terms of not just blending fiction and nonfiction, but leaning more towards poetry and essays than a novel. In general it seems the longlist was filled with books that were hard to pinpoint into one genre/genre-bending titles, as far as I’ve heard at least. I think you’re right though, that The White Book is very much an emotional experience rather than strictly a structural marvel.
It seemed that the prize wanted to highlight this blend of non fiction in fiction but I don’t know if they drew the line anywhere. It’s weird that they say this is a prize for fiction (according to them). I’m just unsure what they want to achieve
I was really struck by your comment that when you read this you thought of the color black…perfect! It is so very bleak. While I found her writing quite beautiful, it was at the same time meaningless to me. How do you connect, and grieve so terribly, for a sibling you never met? Maybe that sounds cold-hearted, but I just didn’t get it.
I know what you mean, I don’t think it could grieve for a sibling I never met or knew. Must be a cultural thing.