A sensational and highly anticipated novel by Ksenia Burzhskaya, a Russian renowned journalist, writer, and co-host of the YouTube channel White Noise, together with the famous Russian writer, Tatyana Tolstaya. Ksenia is also a speechwriter for Alisa (a voice assistant and Yandex’s alternative to Alexa) and the winner of the literary competition My First Pain (2008) organized by another great Russian author, Ludmila Ulitskaya.
My White is set in the modern day. Throughout the book, the main character, sixteen-year-old girl Jane (Zhenya) is preparing for a New Year school performance. Zhenya was brought up by her two moms, artist Alexandra and doctor Vera. But despite that, she faces the same problems every other teenager does: she studies, meets up with friends, falls for a boy, and tries her best to get over an unrequited love and her parents’ divorce.
Zhenya’s ultimate goal and destination in the novel, the concert, has two purposes: to gather her mothers and hopefully make them change their mind about the divorce, and to give her a chance to confess to Lyonya, head of their music club and the guy she is secretly in love with.
The novel has two central story lines. The first is a constant rehearsal, anticipation and premonition, that may be more important than the event itself. The second is memories, regrets, attempts to find your own way and answer the eternal questions: what is love? can it last forever? why do we love at all?