Stuck Inside - Review of Han Kang's 'White Book'

Han Kang will have to be slower and less deliberate in her next book. She will have to produce something that doesn’t first require a recognition of her fame before it can draw applause. Moments of eye-opening prose are not enough to sustain the wave she is on, and it’s a game of diminishing returns. Let’s hope our punk rock band turns its back on fame and the allure of the fawning crowds. Selling the mansion, they move back into their parent’s garage with nothing but the same instruments and motivation that got them started… and a little more coherence. No understanding that anything they write will be heard outside those walls; no money to be made, no glory, no awards. A return to art for its own sake. Let’s hope that the series of empty white pages at the end of this book is the last stunt before a return to the literature that made Han Kang so good in the first place.