"Running the mind laundry had made Jieun realize one thing – today is the most special gift. No matter how many regrets you have, yesterday has passed, and tomorrow is the future that has yet to come, so what we should do is to be in the moment, to live our life today. Perhaps the present is the magic given to us."

Marigold Mind Laundry is Shanna Tan's translation of 메리골드 마음 세탁소 by 윤정은 (Jungeun Yun).

I try to read every fiction novel or story collection translated each year from Korean into English. This includes the brilliant 한강 (Han Kang), the innovative literary fiction of 황정은 (Hwang Jung-eun) and 배수아 (Bae Suah), the political polemic of writers like 황석영 (Hwang Sok-yong), and a growing amount of science-fiction, a particularly Korean take on the genre.

But a trend over the last 18 months or so has been increasing volumes of translations, one which started I think with the from-the-Japanese, which are aiming for whimsical charm. The titles alone of recent translations tell their own story - DallerGut Dream Department Store; Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop; The Healing Season of Pottery, this Marigold Mind Laundry, and (yes, two laundrettes in the same month) Yeonnam-Dong's Smiley Laundromat.

And Marigold Mind Laundry is I'm afraid the epitome of that trend. The rather thin plot has a young woman from a special forest community develop two magical powers (most only have one) - she can both comfort and heal the pain in others and make things come true by dreaming about them. Unfortunately she dreams her parents into vanishing, and then lives many lives over more than a thousand years (although the world doesn't seem to change much) in search of them.

She eventually ends up in one life where, reflecting on how she has managed trauma in the past, she establishes a magical laundry for the mind, one where people can come to have painful memories washed away.

"In her past lives, on days when she’d shared in the pain of others, Jieun would return home to do her laundry and contemplate their stories. She would add the detergent and scrub until the tub was brimming with foamy bubbles. As she rinsed her clothes, any dust and dirt would be washed off together with the bubbles and soap. Then she’d give the clothes a good shake down before hanging them up, all the while thinking how great it would be if sadness and pain could be washed away as thoroughly. Gazing at the washing as it dripped water onto the ground, she felt as though the sludge of negativity in the world were drying out too."

"지난 시절에 누군가의 슬픔을 듣고 위로를 건넨 날이면 지은은 집으로 돌아와 그들의 이야기를 떠올리며 빨래를 했다. 조물조물, 세제를 넣고 빨래를 주무르고 하얀 거품을 바라봤다. 빨래를 물에 헹궈낼수록 거품과 함께 옷에 묻은 먼지와 때들도 물에 흘러 내려갔다. 빨래가 끝나면 그들의 슬픔과 아픔도 깨끗이 지워지길 바라며 빨랫감을 탈탈 털어 널었다. 빨래를 걸어두고 물이 뚝뚝 떨어지는 장면을 멍하니 보고 있으면, 세상의 모든 감정의 찌꺼기들도 같이 말라가는 기분이 들었다."

And of course this leads to her to begin her own self-healing:

"She was learning that every moment in life was precious and full of love. Whether it was yesterday, filled with regret; today, learning how to love herself; or tomorrow, where time might start ticking for her again. No, even if she could never break free and was destined to be stuck in the cycle of rebirths, every single moment of her life was of her own choosing and hence, she should be happy. She choked up at that thought. She pressed a palm against her chest, feeling the warmth spread.

There were days when she wished she couldn’t feel. Then she wouldn’t be in pain, nor would she be sad. If only she could wipe away the dust in her heart before putting it back into her chest, if only she could get rid of the pain and sadness. Because it wasn’t possible to remove her own heart, was this why she was born with the special power to comfort and heal the pain in others?

Or perhaps she could put emotions on pause when it seemed like the day was going to be a sad one, and to start feeling again only on happy days. But then, would she still be able to feel the pain of others?"

Really not my thing, sorry.

2.5

The premise of the Mind Laundry was incredible but the story itself wasn’t impactful or interesting to me as a reader. While we do spend time with some of the Mind Laundry’s clientele, the focal point of the book is the healing journey of its proprietor, Jieun.

The pace was gentle and meandering, but very slow (and repetitive at times).

Jieun was difficult to sympathize with. She cares deeply and wants to heal humanity, but she’s abrasive and quite snarky. She’s lived a million lifetimes due to her powers, but is frustratingly naive. She dishes out life advice about growth and healing, but never thinks to apply it to herself. Much of the story is her learning things that many teenagers and young adults learn as part of growing up and experiencing the sharp end of life. As readers, we spend a lot of time with Jieun’s inner thoughts and they’re often repetitive, self-deprecating, and whiny.

The fantasy element of Jieun’s world was unique from other Korean healing fiction books I’ve read; however, there were a lot of unanswered questions with that element. It didn’t feel like we spent enough time on this for it to warrant being a core part of the story: when Jieun sets up shop in Marigold, she mostly comes across as a slightly magical human. I think if the author wanted to leave the fantasy element in, it needed more world-building and time spent on it; or, they could’ve eschewed the fantasy elements altogether and kept it as magic realism, which might have worked too!

There’s no subtlety and nuance to the messages in this book. In fact, they’re often repeated multiple times in long, meandering paragraphs. Many of the themes were simplistic and the stories that the characters brought to the Mind Laundry weren’t interesting or raw enough to illicit much of an emotional response from me as a reader. It’s all a bit too cutesy, if you know what I mean.

The characters never felt real to me: Jaeha acted like a 12 year old. Yeonhee didn’t have much characterization outside of ‘Jaeha’s sidekick’. Jaeha’s mom and Uncle Yeonghui felt underdeveloped in terms of the overall story. I don’t want to seem reductive but, but Uncle Yeonghui’s struggle to get over childhood bullying after three decades didn’t seem plausible to me. The interconnectedness of the stories worked, especially in the small village of Marigold but I think I wanted more ‘human-ness’ than I got. Plus, it’s almost like the author forgot about Eunbyul who did seem the like the only one of our cast that wasn’t connected to the overall story.

Most of the dialogue had a dream-like, not-quite-real feel to it that worked for the most part, but parts were cheesy and even cringe (“this dude chooses the sickest tunes”).

The book didn’t end so much as just… stop.

If you’re new to the Korean healing fiction, you might enjoy this. To those new to personal development and self-love, this has some beautiful messages that might resonate.

I was privileged to have my request to read this book accepted through NetGalley. Thank you so much Random House UK, Transworld Publishers!

Marigold Mind Laundry by Jungeun Yun

Jiuen is a mythical creature who arrives in Korea. She creates a laundry, where painful experiences can be wiped from your life and wisdom is dispensed with snacks.

The books is a massive success in its homeland and it will probably replicate that here. It’s written in a very child-like parable structure, with the stories appearing to be interlinked in some way. There’s also the element of Jiuen might well be millions of years old and can manifest metaphysical washing machines and the elimination of pain through magic.

About midway through, the novel becomes episodic, with each ‘life lesson’ delivered and the next one incoming. The narrative is also wrapped up far too neatly and with possibly the oldest of plot devices.

Often moving, sometimes too mythical for it’s own good this mix of self-help and magic realism never quite fits together, though it will have the same cultural place as Life Of Pi. It’s published by Penguin on October 3rd and I thank them for a preview copy. #marigoldmindlaundry.

This is a charming story where the key element reminded me a bit of a movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where the protagonist tries to escape heartache by having the recollections of lost love expunged from his memory.

In this book, Jiejun - for her own reasons - performs a service of this nature for others, through laundering their painful memories and experiences so that they do not have to relive them in the usual way as the pain is transferred elsewhere and transformed in the process.

We meet a variety of interesting characters who have experienced various predicaments and traumas including infidelity and bullying, and it is lovely to take in that message: that healing is possible. I enjoyed the book and give it 3.5 stars.

This was a good one, even though the allegory of the laundry was a bit too much for me...

Another book from the "healing fiction" sub-genre for the count! Marigold Mind Laundry tells the story of Jieun and her gift of soothing people's hearts with her "mind laundry", where the stains and creases people accumulate over their lives, through the painful experiences they have gone through, are washed away. Throughout the book, we get to know the stories of various individuals and their struggles, from a single mother — who had to raise her child by herself through challenging conditions that generated trauma for both herself and her son — to a deliveryman, who grappled with a lot of bullying throughout his formative years in school.

I liked that Jieun herself was not immune to the struggles of being a human — missing her parents and still figuring out who she is and how she fits in the world. Moreover, I thought each character's trajectory was very interesting, and some were quite painful as well. However, I will say that I was not a fan of the allegory of the laundry because I felt like it took away from the seriousness of the characters' stories, with its many steps and metaphors.

Thank you very much to Doubleday UK/Transworld Publishers for the e-ARC!