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The White Book feels as if it is being whispered: each paragraph seems to come from some deep and interior place Han Kang wrote it whilst living in Warsaw, though in the book the city is never named explicitly Instead it is only a white city, white for its snow and white for its stone ruins In an interview with Granta, Kang said that when writing this book, she imagined her prematurely dead sister had lived and visited the city ‘in my place’   Photographs are interspersed throughout In some, a woman appears, her face obscured by shadow In others, only her hands are visible She holds a child’s gown She holds a pebble-like object covered in salt The photographs are of white objects, but in contrast to the white pages, they are startlingly grey The specks and splashes of whiteness are surrounded by shadow The woman seems trapped in darkness Who is this woman supposed to represent? The narrator? The ghost of the sister? The novelist Kang? All or none of the above?  The literal answer is that they are photographs of a performance by Kang, shot by the photographer Choi Jinhyuk But within the pages, they seem to carry the spirit of characters — and the novelist herself   The text is a loose collection of thoughts, scenes, and images Few are longer than a page They are gathered into three sections — ‘I’, ‘She’, and ‘All Whiteness’ ‘I’ follows the narrator considering the colour white and describes her sister’s passing ‘She’ imagines the sister’s life Some subsections describe what the sister might have done—having an X-ray, finding a pebble, attempting to befriend a dog Others contemplate white things—seagulls, a dead butterfly, a lace curtain   Both ‘I’ and ‘She’ are pensive and slightly sorrowful At first, this similarity is disorienting: it is hard to see where one perspective ends and the other begins Slowly, the reader realises that this muddling is the point The concern of the narrator is not whether the sister would have been a vastly different person, but what it means to replace one life with another Her mother would not have

Ivan Filton had retired early ‘I have been working a lot on my garden,’ declared Ivan Filton ‘This is why you texted?’ asked Graham Donne   ‘What do you think of it?’   ‘I like it,’ answered Graham ‘It is spectacular’   Ivan felt an overwhelming pride in his work, the first such feeling he’d had for a long while Not, I think, since Ivan Filton was young, when he had been very good at intricate crayon drawings, had he felt this proud The secret to the garden was mathematics; he had followed certain number patterns to order his garden in a simple and pleasing way He had cut beds and planted, laid lawn, placed a bench and arbour, rooted a tree, and built a curve of path Then he’d put up fencing, weaved vines, cornered off a vegetable patch with a low bush, positioned ornaments, directed two separate light sources, hooked up a fountain, populated a pond, and husbanded a chicken coop Yes, it was a fantastic garden   ***   The following day Graham arrived again, this time unannounced, with his girlfriend Lea, who was twenty years younger than Ivan and Graham ‘I wanted to show Lea your garden,’ said Graham   And so Ivan Filton showed her the garden and Lea said it was wonderful, and Graham said it was wonderful again, and then Lea asked if she could stay and read a book on the bench next to the arbour Ivan said yes, and Graham went and Lea stayed and read She read Saturday, which is by Ian McEwan Lea’s face was quite animated as she read, her expression changing and reacting as if she were watching a film Ivan worked quietly on his garden so as not to disturb her, choosing only those tasks that did not make much noise He pruned a little, watered a little To impress Lea, Ivan drove to Homebase and bought three pots of outdoor paint: a green called Woodland Grove, a red called Roman Red, and a yellow called Zint Yellow Zint is not a word, but it does sound good for a yellow and this probably tipped