The story of a young Korean woman living in Germany. Apparently she came to study but didn’t get much past taking private tutoring lessons to learn thThe story of a young Korean woman living in Germany. Apparently she came to study but didn’t get much past taking private tutoring lessons to learn the language. We assume she’s bisexual because first she had an affair with her female tutor, broke up with her, and is now involved with a young German man. There are only four characters developed in the book; the fourth is a male German language tutor.
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A good part of the story seems to be to make us wonder how such an intelligent woman can stay with such a loser, the young German man. His favorite expression, a good part of the little dialog in the book, is “It’s all your fault.” He calls his dog “My love.” He never says that to her. He’s argumentative and has no interest in serious discussion of anything. He always eats all the cookies, leaving none for her.
She (the main character) seems to be a full-blown introvert, even anti-social, disliking the banal conversation at parties, even disliking going to movies with friends. The reader is also puzzled: What does she want? Apparently to get back with her female love – but she – the main character – initiated the break-up. There is no description of sex. The most we read of is rubbing of feet and lying with a head upon a chest.
In addition to her thoughts about music, we get almost mini-reviews of a few things she is reading, although these are probably fictitious books – I looked but could not find them. We also get, apparently real mini-biographies of the lives and deaths of famous composers. She develops a theme of formal vs. informal concerts. She tells us music can’t belong to its creator.
A lot of this book is actually about music, starting with the title. The author tells us you can’t have “greater music” just like you can’t have a “greater death.” Music and famous compositions are used as metaphors. Here’s an example: “Why do humans have this desire for possession, and why do we grow savage when we cannot satisfy it? The strains of a single melody, slowly and agonizingly teased from among a thousand other sounds only for its sublime order to be destroyed by a moment’s anger, tearing it down and trampling it underfoot so that it can never be made whole again…”
Some lines I liked: “In the beginning there are memories.”
“…there are those of us who are already dying from the moment they are born.”
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Here are a couple of passages that I think illustrate the generally good writing style:
“Once I’d stood in front of the door for a short while, objects slowly began to take on solid forms. The faintest of light seeped into the apartment from who knew where, kindling the silent, solitary existence of inanimate objects, gifting them with the palest hues, whispered words, the barest outline of physical form.”
“Love is easily negated, and always imprisoned in a haze of obscurity; it can be shallow, wounding, irresponsible and shameless, constantly making excuses for itself. Long after having dwindled to nothingness it can still be found waiting in the wings, grimly intent on any opportunity to speak itself back into existence…”
A fairly good read, although as her work has been described, it’s largely plotless, other than what I’ve mentioned above.
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The author (b. 1965) has written almost a dozen novels and collections of short stories. Like the main character in this book, she lived in Germany for a year. With all this musical title and theme, I was looking for some evidence that she was an accomplished musician or music student, but I only found that she majored in chemistry!
Top illustration from destinationnewbedford.org Photo of German city by pixabay from thepienews.com The author from theguardian.com
I read this book because I recently enjoyed this author’s novel The Vegetarian. The White Book is not a novel; it’s a collection of mostly one-page miI read this book because I recently enjoyed this author’s novel The Vegetarian. The White Book is not a novel; it’s a collection of mostly one-page mini-essays, almost meditations, on things that are white.
The focus is on loneliness, loss and mortality. Several are about the whiteness of pain (the author suffers from migraines).
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Amazing how many things that lend themselves to symbolism are white when you think of it. So we have pieces on baby gowns, rice, fog, breast milk, salt, sugar, pills, hair, the Milky Way, bones, ashes, and so on.
There’s also a lot about winter: snow, snowflakes, frost, sleet. The narrator is visiting Warsaw, but her own country of Korea has harsh winters and she also visits the Artic to see the midnight sun. So there’s a lot on winter whiteness: snow, snowflakes, ice, sleet, frost.
A couple of examples of good writing:
“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 is 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.”
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In the chapter Frost:
“Trees shiver off their leaves, incrementally lightening their burden. Solid objects like stones or buildings appear subtly more dense. Seen from behind, men and women bundled up in heavy coats are saturated with a mute presentiment, that of people beginning to endure.”
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The author occasionally gives us poetry:
“Because at some point you will inevitably cast me aside. When I am at my weakest, when I am most in need of help, You will turn your back on me, cold and irrevocable. And that is something perfectly clear to me. And I cannot now return to the time before that knowledge.”
I enjoyed the book. Reading it was like meditating.
[Edited 1/14/22]
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The author (b. 1970) has written a half-dozen novels of which three have been translated into English. Her book, The Vegetarian, won the 2016 Man Booker prize for translations. This book reviewed here, The White Book, was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker prize.
Top photo from marketplace.canva.com Photo of Warsaw from gettyimages.com Snow at Argenteuil by Claude Monet, 1875 on Wikipedia The author from lithub.com...more
The author makes a point of starting the story by telling us it’s about an ordinary Korean couple. The man, recognizing that he is nothing special, maThe author makes a point of starting the story by telling us it’s about an ordinary Korean couple. The man, recognizing that he is nothing special, marries a woman whom he calls “the most run-of-the-mill woman in the world.”
The young woman, living in Seoul, starts having nightmares full of blood and hanging meat. She decides to become a vegetarian. Her husband is irate and even recruits her family to help him get her to start eating and cooking meat again.
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That pressure and the continuing nightmares push her further toward an almost plant-like existence. She takes her clothes off to get sun and runs into the forest and stands in the rain lie a tree. She hardly sleeps; she becomes anorexic and skeletal. Her brother-in-law abuses her. (view spoiler)[ He's a video artist who sexually exploits her. (hide spoiler)]
We learn about her abusive father, and maybe some of her issues had roots in that abuse.
There is good writing, such as this passage about her brother-in-law:
“…even after they were married he still looked perpetually worn out. He was always busy with his own things, and during what little time he did spend at home he looked more like a traveler putting up there for a night than a man in his own home. His silence had the heavy mass of rock and the tenacious resistance of rubber, particularly when his art wasn’t going well.
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The author (b. 1970) has written more than 20 books of which a half-dozen appear to have been translated into English. This book, The Vegetarian, won the 2016 Man Booker prize for translated novels. It was also picked as one of the 10 Best Books of 2016 by the NY Times Book Review. I also enjoyed reading her The White Book, mostly poems, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker prize.
Photo of Seoul from beltandroad.news The author from nytimes.com
The coming-of-age story of a decidedly moody and introverted young South Korean woman. The events in the novel are set against the backdrop of the stuThe coming-of-age story of a decidedly moody and introverted young South Korean woman. The events in the novel are set against the backdrop of the student riots that shut down universities in that country in the 1980s.
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We follow a small group of students, some of whom disappear in the violence, and some of whom commit suicide, increasing the moodiness of our heroine. In a sense this book is about how traumatic events shape our lives and, in the case of this young woman, make her old before her time.
The story kept my interest despite my confusion at times following the characters. Three people write in the same journal, where journal entries are occasional chapters, and the protagonist and two of the main characters have Joon as their first or last name.
Still the story kept my attention and I learned a lot about Korean culture among young people at that time. There is a lot of local color of Seoul in the 80s.
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The South Korean author (b. 1963) has written about a dozen novels, half of which have been translated into English. She’s best known among English readers for her novel Please Look After Mom that won the 2012 Man Asian literary award. She got some unwanted publicity in 2015 when she admitted to plagiarizing, early in her career, passages from a short story by Japanese author Yukio Mishima – a stupid thing to do since Mishima is one of the best-known Japanese authors in his own country and in translation.
Top photo of Seoul from kayak.com The author from Wikipedia...more
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