The luxury of quitting a job that is making you miserable is fictionalised hard in Japanese and Korean healing fiction. While I love my quiet escapes and fantasy of a work-life epiphany that will help me earn my livelihood as well, I am often miffed by the blatant unrealistic aspect of a complete break from work and actually being able to relax.
I was about done with healing fiction when I picked up The Healing Season of Pottery by Yeon So-Min as part of this book recommendation and bookclub I had announced last month (keep up, will you). I expected pottery to heal all scars of capitalism on the protagonist and send her on her way to join the workforce again. So I was pleasantly surprised when the protagonist, Jungmin, straight up said she did not expect pottery to heal her or let her come up with an epiphany about life.
Jungmin was just as disillusioned by the healing powers of a calm hobby as I was. This book became a binge for me right after that. But try as I might, I could not speed up my reading, this book required me to slow down and absorb the words at a deeper level.
Jungmin has a dark past that she has been carrying around. Her emotional wounds are so deep that she does not have the capacity of leading a seemingly normal life and heal from her betrayals. She has been using her work as a broadcast writer to delay dealing with her emotions.
All of the mishaps of her life come crashing down when that work stops being satisfying to her. Her life loses meaning and she is left a husk of her previous self. After taking the bold decision to quit her job, she finds herself watching the changing seasons from the confines of her home.
As she is left behind by the world due to her inertia, she is more likely to stay in her safe space and never venture out.
One fine day, she walks into a pottery workshop thinking it a cafe. The people, the malleable clay, the zeal to create something bring her back to life and gives her new perspective. Her life is not upended with one epiphany, but it transitions into something more meaningful.
Jungmin finds the chance to address and resolve her old grudges and forge new relationships. But all of this not credited to pottery itself, it is she who pulls herself out of her slump and the people around her who support her. If anything, pottery gives her perspective, the leisure to observe her surroundings beyond her immediate tasks and the metaphor of making herself anew. In its authentic and somewhat cynical take towards life, the book hold up a mirror to the constantly busy society and becomes more realistic that I had expected a healing fiction to be.
This book is a total recommended read from me!
You can grab your copy of The Healing Season of Pottery by Yeon So-Min here.
(I earn a small commission from every qualified purchase from the link to continue reading and reviewing)
Have you read The Healing Season of Pottery by Yeon So-Min? What are your thoughts on it? What are your favourite Korean Healing Fiction books?
Feel free to drop a comment or reach out to me across social media at @thecalcuttanbibliophile. I would love to hear from you.
The Calcuttan Bibliophile 
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