This is a short, lyrical book of brief prose pieces, built around white things such as snow, salt, a swaddling cloth and breath. The narrator, living in a European city, reflects on an older sister who lived only a few hours after birth. Through these small meditations on fragility, mourning and the city's own history of destruction, the book considers what it means to live on after loss. It is quiet, fragmentary and intimate, closer to a prose poem than a conventional novel.