A brief young adult novella, translated from the Chinese, Yan Ge's White Horse chronicles a few years in the life of Yun Yun, a young girl whose family life begins to deteriorate, as she and her cousin Zhang Qing grow older. Episodic in nature, the narrative here skips from scene to scene, depicting key moments of change, from the ways in which Zhang Qing begins to draw away from Yun Yun, and to rebel, as she reaches adolescence, to the slowly building revelation that Yun Yun's widowed father and Zhang Qing's married mother have a more complicated relationship than either girl realized. It is at these key moments that Yun Yun sees a mysterious white horse, whose function - a harbinger of those changes? a talisman protecting Yun Yun against the worst harm those changes can bring? - is not always clear. The story ends as Yun Yun graduates from primary school at the top of her class, her family life terribly compromised...

At a brief eighty-four pages, White Horse is a quick read, and I finished it the other day during the course of a single train commute home. Mulling it over ever since, I've come to the conclusion that I don't entirely understand it, although I did find it engrossing and at times quite poignant. I'm not sure that I grasped the significance of the white horse in the story, although I learn toward the interpretation that it offered both warning and protection, as Yun Yun did seem to retain quite a bit of her innocence (or perhaps just distance?), despite the sordid events occurring around her. Of course, I also wondered whether the horse was related to her father, since one of his chess moves, at the beginning of the story, involved "white horse bright hooves." I found some of the revelations toward the close of the book somewhat confusing as well. Apparently Yun Yun's father and Zhang Qing's mother had been pretending to be siblings, for the benefit of Zhang Qing's father, even though the whole town knew otherwise, and had previously had a romantic relationship. I wasn't sure if the implication of this was that Zhang Qing was Yun Yun's sister, or what to make of the identity of Yun Yun's mother. Her statement to her classmate, at the close of the book, that she was the child of a white horse, just added more confusion.

This was definitely worth reading, if for nothing else than the Chinese take on the classic theme of growing up, but I think it is also worth reading for the storytelling, despite the confusion I felt. Some of the scenes - especially the ones in which Auntie is being abusive to Zhang Qing - are very well done, and really made me cringe in sympathy. Recommended to anyone looking for coming of age stories, or for young adult novels set in China. ( )