This book is exactly what I needed right now! I myself am a hobby ceramicist who’s going through a rough patch. Reading about Jungmin finding her spark again through ceramics inspired me to get back into the studio and get my hands on some clay!

Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review!

Like many other people of a certain age in South Korea, Jungmin is experiencing severe burnout after years of grindingly hard work in a career as a screenwriter. As a result, she has become increasingly withdrawn and unable to interact in a normal fashion with the wider world.

Untilled finally one day, she ventures beyond the claustrophobic surroundings of her living space and re- discovers the world outside, albeit in a very limited fashion. By entering a pottery studio, Jungmin slowly learns to quieten the clamour within and without, harnessing the clay to summon serenity of a sort.

In the process, she meets other people, begins to engage with their stories, and - instead of merely existing - really starts living once again.

This is a warm hearted story of how loneliness, alienation and exhaustion can gradually be cured by community, kindness and re-engagement, so that life becomes something to enjoy rather than endure. It gets 3.5 stars.

"Maybe the pottery of blues and whites, much like those found in nature, had already stolen her heart. She found it fascinating that these hard ceramics made by human hands could resemble nature's hues quite so closely.

자연의 색을 닮은 푸르고 하얀 도자기들에 마음을 뺏긴 건지도 몰랐다. 인간이 만든 딱딱한 고체가 자연의 색을 쏙 빼닮을 수 있다는 것이 신기했다."

The Healing Season of Pottery is Claire Richards' translation of 공방의계절 by 연소민 (Yeon Somin).

As a lover of both translated fiction and Korean culture, I do try to read pretty much all the fiction that is translated from Korean into English, but a lot of it is then not the sort of avant-garde literary fiction I would normally seek - and the vibe here is I think best described as 'charming' - less generously, 'twee'.

30yo Jungmin has been flat-bound for months, suffering from burn-out and severe depression, when one day she forces herself to leave her flar:

"Three seasons went by with Jungmin mired in selfloathing. One summer morning, nine months after the thorn had pricked her right palm, she shot up from her chair and screamed. The words she blurted out contained no sensible resolutions or goals. They weren’t even sentences to begin with. Nothing more than an ‘exclamation’, devoid of fully formed words. But her cry was loaded with an immense pressure, something she needed to act on. In truth, this scream had been building since last spring. As her life as a recluse went on, she started to believe she might never be able to return to society and would die there alone. Hundreds of thousands of won kept vanishing with the simple act of breathing. It was as if each month she was being charged just to carry on living. Living a life worthy of that sum was the only way to ensure her money wasn’t going to waste."

Looking for a coffee shop, she accidentally wanders into a pottery workshop instead where she receives a warm, and unintrusive, welcome and finds healing, and meaning, in the craft of pottery and the community of those she learns it with. Adopting a stray cat also gives her a sense of purpose.

"She realized that there was no miracle cure for inertia better than responsibility. Her body, once heavy and waterlogged, grew light like a towel dried crisp in the sun. That feeble voice that’d echoed round her ears, questioning her right to take responsibility for another life, gradually faded away. There was no need for Jungmin to writhe or plead – the tightly- wound balls of yarn that suffocated her seemed to be unravelling of their own accord, one after another."

A trigger for Jungmin's retreat from society was realising that she was unable to fully take in art or literature - "She couldn’t find a single meaning hidden between the lines. Once she’d read more than five sentences, the contents would vanish from her mind – like a snowman lacking shade, melting helplessly under the morning sunlight" - and as she re-emerges from her 'cave' she is able to revisit an art exhibition where she had similarly struggled previously, and re-connect with it:

"Embedded here and there across my entire body, it seems, is the deep sorrow of a femme fatale, something that I cannot deny. No matter how I squirm and writhe, my sad legend is not erased."
Chun Kyung- ja, self- portrait, The 22nd Page of My Sad Legend , 1977

See here for the portrait: https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/The-22nd-Page-of-My-Sorrowful-Legend.jpg

For those new(er) to Korean literature, there is plenty of comprehensible cultural colour here (and I suspect Richards has skillfully inserted many glosses for the English reader) - hanja characters in names, honorific speech markers, the Korean education system, the ubiquity of TV features on cafes and restaurants, and various food dishes. Oddly, given the specific subject matter, I felt the aspects on the craft of pottery itself were less successful.

Ultimately this is well executed - but not my sort of book, hence the rating.

As a girlie who has wanted to get into pottery for so long, this filled me with so much joy! It was lovely. The characters were so sweet, and for once I didn't spend the whole novel hating the love interest. I thought the vibe of this book was just so warm and wonderful, and I would really recommend this to people as a perfect autumn read.

Tiktok is going to eat this book up!