The Healing Season Of Pottery

 

The Healing Season of Pottery / Yeon Somin
trans. from the Korean by Clare Richards
NY: Algonquin, 2024, c2023.
272 p.

This recent Korean novel was really enjoyable. It falls into the healing fiction category, but it has a little more depth as well. This storyline is another example of the midlife crisis at 30 that I've been noticing in Korean novels of this kind recently. 

Jungmin has burnt out at thirty, and abruptly quits her job as a tv writer, ending up as a recluse in her small apartment for months. Spring comes and she finally stumbles out into the world, coming across a pottery workshop that she at first mistakes for a café. The people inside are very welcoming, and somehow Jungmin finds herself joining some pottery classes. 

The regular schedule gets her out of her apartment, working with her hands provides her some calm and relief, and the small core of students she meets there give her new friendships and social interactions. She even ends up taking in a cat for one of them. 

The author clearly knows how to do pottery, and the details of the actual construction of pottery gives lots of opportunity for metaphors for life. I thought this worked very well. It's a nice change from the cafes, cats and bookshops that populate most of the books in this genre. Although there are cats and coffee here too ;) 

Through the year of making pottery and making a new place for herself in the world, Jungmin gets a sense of what she wants to do next, and what will be meaningful for her. There is a small thread of romance in the story, but she is not saved by falling in love or finding a relationship; she makes her own path, particularly focused on her work life. I really appreciated that, and felt that it gave integrity to this story. We also get a little bit of insight into the other characters and their big changes - they all have something that they are facing up to. I thought the interactions between the characters were lovely, each one an interesting person and no nastiness going on. Even when a heavy incident from Jungmin's past  arises again, there is a resolution to the lingering bitterness. The reader is left with a sense of uplift and a feeling that these characters are going to be okay. 

The translation is a little noticeable at times, with many Korean words left untranslated, to give the flavour of the original, I assume. A small glossary would have been nice to include, but there is always google. Some of the choices definitely reflect the UK English of the translator, as well. And I found it interesting that this book talks about celebrating Christmas in Korea (they have a pottery booth at a Christmas fair) and various other elements of contemporary life like international travel, the business world and more. I really liked this one.