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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

ADVICE FROM BENJO CORTEZ GALLERY OWNER, CHELSEA THE RED CAT, NEW YORK, 2AM    When I feel something It doesn’t show I got rid of the signs With injections in the forehead I can tell you where to go But not anywhere My eyes got fucked up in Milan Some bitch Can you see the scar?   Keep your skin perfect Put these SkinCeuticals on   Every day Each morning           And I swear   Vitamin B5 Gel Serum 10 Notre Coeur           That one twice a day Daily Moisture           Do that daily Tinted SPF5O, Dead Sea Live Dark Room, RV5, Eska Formula Swallow aloe vera Are you writing this down?   And only eat soup You can put anything in it But only soup   I lost nearly everything   My whole body   And then now Well, now I’m eating this cream mousse It’s all back But that was because of Massimo He disappeared   This was before James Before James I only dated architects           Which Massimo wasn’t He was a model But up until then Architects only He kept saying Massimo kept saying You only want me because I am not an architect Which was true And I told him it was true Otherwise I would date an architect I’m an honest person You should always be honest   But he disappeared I hurt easily He knew this   Now I have James Yes, he’s very young But it’s because he has good skin, He uses all those creams   I used to get jealous But he’s good Knows how not to hurt people His brother just died So he knows           But once He was in a restroom in a club And I was unsure He was in there a long time I knocked, and went away Or pretended I was watching from the sink Looking for signs in the mirror But I was quiet Then I came back, or didn’t because I didn’t go away But I knew he was not in there alone And there was this guy I’d seen him looking at James And so after a while I made James open the door and he was In there Alone   Massimo disappeared though Back to Milan He was from Milan I tracked him down We went to therapy It was at that point Massimo admitted he knew how to hurt me and Sometimes Did it on purpose That’s when I realised Massimo was not a good person I didn’t want to talk anymore But we were always at the therapist Because I had set it up like that And Massimo kept on talking For weeks Until the therapist had to stop him What about Benjo, she said What does Benjo think?       PLEDGE DRIVE   Weightless beside his possessions In bags bound To