The White Book
Ratings53
Average rating3.9
You know when you look at a paper cut and you wonder how something so white so soft so innocent as paper can be so fucking painful? That's what she does with language.
A slim volume which revolves around the colour white. To the Koreans white signifies mourning and death as well as purity, thus the wedding garments as well as mourning garments are white. This book discusses death and mourning in symbolic language. The text is sparse, yet the author uses the words to weave her story. The Author received the Nobel Prize in Literature this which was the driving force for me to read this book.
Rating: 3.88 leaves out of 5-Characters: 3/5 -Cover: 5/5-Story: 3/5-Writing: 5/5Genre: Contemporary, Korean Lit., LitFic., Poetry-Contemporary: 5/5-Korean Lit.: 5/5-LitFic: 3/5-Poetry: 2/5Type: AudiobookWorth?: I can't answer that honestly.Hated Disliked Meh It Was Okay Liked Really Liked LovedI am not the biggest fan of poetry. I picked up this book because it hit a couple prompts for a couple reading challenges.I think poetry, in order to be really good, has to hold that hit for most of the time you are reading it. This did have times when my chest tightened and tears threatened to form. The story told through these poems is heartbreaking. Like stacked cotton, feathers, and clouds you start to feel the heaviness.I will leave this off with a quote from this book that struck me and thinking about it now has me tearing up.“This life needed only one of us to live. 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.”
I was intrigued by the concept of this book and I must say, I was not disappointed
I was quite fascinated by this book. I'm a huge fan of books that are ‘visual' in their telling, lyrical words that put you right there in the moment viscerally. You feel the cool damp fog or smell that fresh brewed coffee. Han Kang's short book is a wandering through musings on life and death and family and how those intertwine with the ‘Color' white. Punctuated by black and white photographs, I was immediately pulled into this white world and although hers is told from a personal family tragedy, I couldn't help but find pieces that fit my own story. Little snippets of wondering that echoed my own thoughts, if for a different context. Highly unique and wonderfully written, I highly recommend falling into Han Kang's white world.
Grief, appropriate to the cultural symbolism of the colour white, pervades the pages of The White Book. If you've read Maggie Nelson's Bluets, Han Kang's The White Book is similar in its series of riffs on a colour and its evocations for the author. I would say Hang Kang's work is more sparsely poetic & melancholy in its tone. There is beauty to be had here if you're in the right headspace & life stage.
Korealaiselta Han Kangilta on suomennettu tähän mennessä omituinen Vegetaristi ja erinomaisen kiehtova historiallinen Ihmisen teot. Uutuus Valkoinen kirja kallistuu taas sinne omituisempaan suuntaan. Pienoisromaani on hädin tuskin satasivuinen teos, joka kertoo paitsi valkoisesta väristä, myös menetyksestä, surusta ja kuolemasta.
Omaelämäkerrallinen pienoisromaani Valkoinen kirja kertoo Han Kangin sisaresta, joka kuoli ennen Han Kangin syntymää, vain kahden tunnin ikäisenä. Kirja on runollinen ja maalauksellinen sarja kuvia, jotka keskittyvät erilaisiin valkoisiin asioihin. Kirjailija käyskentelee Varsovassa, itselleen vieraassa kaupungissa, ja havainnoi asioita – ja ennen kaikkea matkustaa itseensä.
Kirja on viipyilevä, pohdiskeleva. Mitä jos isosisar kuljeskelisikin Varsovan kaduilla? Entä jos isosisar olisi selvinnyt, eikä kirjailija olisi itse koskaan syntynyt? Kirja ihastelee elämän haurautta ja herkkyyttä, toisaalta käsittelee surua ja menetystä. Teksti on hyvin visuaalista, erilaisten valkoisten mielikuvien täyttämää. Kiinnostava kirja ja kauniisti kirjoitettua tekstiä, mutta minut kaikki tämä runollisuus jätti lopulta hieman etäälle.
‘'I hold nothing dear. Not the place where I live, not the door I pass through every day, not even, damn it, my life.''
In the beautiful, mysterious world of colours white retains an exceptional position. White is purity, light, clarity, sanctity, fragility. White is the symbol of the union between two people and the colour of mourning in East Asian culture. In Greece, white is the colour of purity and the sun. The houses in our islands are white-washed to reflect its rays. In China, white is worn in funerals to symbolise gratitude and in Korea, it symbolizes the clarity of the passage to a less troubling world. In Peru, white is associated with good health and prosperity. In the Balkan countries, white is associated with snow, light and the wisdom of the human race. White is the colour of peace seen in the White Flag of truce and ceasefire, the hope for the end of violence in its most terrible form, the war. White is the colour of the angels and the colour of ghosts. In Han Kang's shuttering account, white is despair and hope, pain and winter. It is an elegy for a life taken too soon and a chance that was never granted.
‘'Snow had begun to scatter down. Outside, the alley had darkened, the street lights were not yet on. Paint tin in one hand, brush in the other, I stood unmoving, a dumb witness to the snowflakes' slow descent, like hundreds of feathers feathering down.''
The beauty of the snowflakes, the mystery of the fog. The white of our bones, these God-given miracles that construct our very being, so strong and yet so fragile. The white of a mother's milk, the very essence that keeps us alive when we need it most. The moon with its white light that keeps us company during the long nights when our thoughts keep us awake and our fears acquire substance. When the face of the Man on the moon gazes at us kindly, with sympathy because he knows. The white nights in summer that protect us from the darkness. The secrets of the mysterious colour compose a haunting elegy to a stillborn sister. A symphony written in Warsaw with echoes of Seoul, beautiful cities where winter freezes everything and paints in white and grey, the colours of the ashes...
One of the most haunting, beautiful, raw books that will ever grace our world...
‘'In this city of severe winters, a December night unspools itself around her. The darkness outside the window has no moon to soften it. In the small workshop to the rear of the building, presumably as a security measure, a dozen electric lights are left on all through the night. She looks at the patches of illumination, scattered and isolated amid the black.''
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No other word beyond ‘beautiful' comes to mind as I reflect on this book. Up there with [b:Gratitude 27161964 Gratitude Oliver Sacks https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1445791421s/27161964.jpg 47201204] by Oliver Sacks, and [b:The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness 13579364 The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness Timothy J. Keller https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1352949769s/13579364.jpg 19163471] by Tim Keller, The White Book is in a class of ‘small books' that are so incredibly rich, profound, and mysterious that they deserve multiple readings over a lifetime.Meditations on metaphors, stories, philosophies, and musings to do with the color ‘white' may seem shallow at face value, but within these pages (with a layout designed so intentionally) lies words that have been thought and labored over. The result is anything and everything, short paragraphs to longer contemplations that cause tears to well up in ones eyes; the kind of reflections that make you stop wherever you're reading, look up, and honestly feel the emotions Kang is channeling into her stories of growing up, wandering the streets of Waraw, as the ghost of her older sister, who died during childbirth, haunts her mind and heart on every corner.PartingDon't die. For God's sake don't die.I open my lips and mutter the words you heard on opening your black eyes, you who were ignorant of language. I press down with all my strength onto the white paper. I believe no other words of parting can be found. Don't die. Live.Powerful things await inside this book. Truly one of the most original, haunting and melancholic things I've ever read.