A riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania “Powerful and provocative . . . a novel about female strength, spirit, resilience—and the solace that friendship can sometimes provide.”—The Washington … provide.”—The Washington Post
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time • NPR • Esquire • Bustle • BBC • New York Post • InStyle
Kyuri is an achingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a Seoul “room salon,” an exclusive underground bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake threatens her livelihood.
Kyuri’s roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the heir to one of the country’s biggest conglomerates.
Down the hall in their building lives Ara, a hairstylist whose two preoccupations sustain her: an obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that she hopes will change her life.
And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to have a baby that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise in Korea’s brutal economy.
Together, their stories tell a gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal, in which their tentative friendships may turn out to be the thing that ultimately saves them.
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This book stole my weekend! I stayed up till 4am two nights in a row, absolutely riveted and astonished by this remarkable, brilliantly crafted and devastatingly exquisite novel. It was an eye-opening peek into a world I knew nothing about, and I’m so grateful to have gone down this rabbit-hole!
Each voice in this quartet cuts through the pages so cleanly and clearly that the overall effect is one of dangerously glittering harmony… As engrossing as a war chant, or a mosaic formed with blades, every piece a memento sharpened on those unyielding barriers between us and our ideal lives.
Thank you Random House for a gifted copy. I voluntarily reviewed this book. All opinions expressed are my own.
If I Had Your Face
By: Frances Cha
REVIEW
I started reading If I Had Your Face without even glancing at the synopsis, which I never do. I’m glad because I was genuinely surprised by how much I liked this book.
“I would live your life so much better than you if I had your face.”
From the first page, I was absorbed and needed to know more. The four women narrating the story, Kyuri, Miho, Ara and Woona, all have troubled lives and unfulfilled dreams. Each living a lifestyle never intended, passing like ships in the night, until, one day, a spark of recognition ignites friendships. In their environment, Seoul, South Korea, women are expected to possess and embody certain characteristics, ignore horrible misdeeds done by men, and be beautiful adornments who are seen and used but never seriously heard.
“It still amazes me-the naivete of the women of this country…They pretend so deeply that they actually forget.”
Beauty and youth are valued to the extreme, and women have surgery after surgery to obtain the perfect standard. In fact, it’s a basic assumption that a woman will have plastic surgery at some point. Still, some don’t.
“Sometimes I just can’t stop thinking about how ugly she is. I mean, why doesn’t she just get surgery? Why? I really don’t understand ugly people. Especially if they have money. Are they stupid?”
The measures women take are horrifying, but do they have a viable alternative? The struggle, the pressure, the assumptions, the unattainable ideal, are universal and infinite. Seoul is the most wired place in the world, and as such, it is a futuristic and foreign place of extremes. For example, Seoul has the most highly educated population, but it also has the highest suicide rate in the world. Can you imagine the pressure to be better and better still? Furthermore, Seoul has the lowest birth rate because, who can afford to have a baby? I’m glad the author took the story down a path with four women who represent a small fraction of the numerous problems faced by females in this culture. At once thought provoking and fascinating, it was easy to spend time in this world of a behind the scenes look at what life is really like. The characters have such distinct authentic voices that ring true. I recommend this book for women who question the idea of perfection and conformity in their own and other cultures and for women who feel undeserving of their own talents and dreams. Although this book ends rather abruptly, it is my hope that each woman is her own salvation.
Make way for Frances Cha, an entrancing new voice who guides us into the complexities and contradictions of modern-day Seoul, a dissonant, neon world that is ripped open to bare the same universal and human challenges that face us all. I devoured this novel in a single sitting.
Wow! I didn’t want this book to end. Frances Cha shines a brighter-than-bright light on the pressures facing women in contemporary Seoul. Plastic surgery, cut-throat competition, societal expectations, gender roles. It’s all here and it’s all completely mesmerising. Read this now before it becomes a series / movie (which I will totally watch and can’t wait for! but read this first!).
Once I started reading I couldn’t put the book down. Extremely well written. Each character tells her story and slowly interactions between the characters build. I was unfamiliar with the Korean cult of beauty and the impact of wealth on peoples beliefs and lifestyles. I really enjoyed the read.
5* Beauty is Deep Stars
This fascinating book is set in South Korea which is the plastic surgery capital of the world. The story revolves around five young woman who all live in the same apartment building and are desperately trying to make a living for themselves.
Four of the women are friends, Ara who is a mute hair stylist and has a K-Pop obsession, her roommate Sujin who dreams of working in a 10 percent room salon (supposed to be the top 10% of the prettiest girls in the industry) just like the beautiful Kyuri but will have to undergo some serious plastic surgery and Kyuri’s roommate, Miho who is an up and coming talented artist. All of them are damaged because of their pasts where they suffered, loss, cruelty and abandonment. The fifth woman is Wonna who is newly married and lives downstairs and is struggling to make ends meet, added to this she has had a few miscarriages and is desperately trying to fall pregnant again.
We get to see how they live their lives in a misogynistic world, how beauty reigns supreme and what lengths they go to for perfection. What is apparent is the strong friendship formed between them and how they depend and reply on each other for support and strength. I enjoyed the authors writing style, it felt real and was insightful.
I highly recommend this amazing and thought-provoking book.
I read the whole thing thinking it would all come together in the end. Either I missed something or it never happened. It just stopped.
I really wanted to like this story. I feel that a better story was there, lurking, but not fleshed out. There were many women introduced to the reader, but none of those characters were well-rounded. I didn’t feel connected to any of them, which made me feel disconnected to the story. This may be because it was a translation? The writing felt simple, so my feelings on the book may be because of that. It was interesting, though, to learn about what lengths women will go to in Korea in order to fit in to the country’s ideal beauty standards. I won’t recommend this book based on the writing, but the subject matter was compelling.
I’ve been Seoul a few times, and work in the beauty industry, so this is a specific representation of what I have experienced in the beauty culture of South Korea. I think if you want to learn or begin to understand what the pressures of the beauty industry. Also this book also has a good comparison on how the grass always looks greener, but its not.
I look forward to more books from this author.
It feels like a realistic window into the lives of young women in Seoul. But oh my, how much despair!
Trite
I enjoyed the insight into Korean society and the pressures put on women in Korea that this book explored. This book portrays plastic surgery being as normal as getting a new haircut to change up your look and I don’t doubt that it’s accurate. I enjoyed the different characters portrayed in this book and I think I had hoped that we would get to spend more time with them. The book ends abruptly and is really too short. Maybe if the author had focused on 1-2 of the women in the book instead of the 4 women it tries to capture, it would’ve been more effective. I still enjoyed the cultural aspects of the book and think it’s worth reading for exposure to what societal pressures on women are like in Korea.
I liked this book. Had never read anything about contemporary South Korea. I learned a lot.
‘If I Had Your Face’ is a debut novel by Frances Cha which focuses on the lives of four young women living in Seoul, South Korea and the way that extremely rigid standards of beauty and strict class structures rules their lives and restrict their opportunities. This book was a fascinating look at an entirely different culture, in particular I found the insight into attitudes towards plastic surgery in South Korea to be riveting (if slightly terrifying). I did feel that this book suffered though for not really having a plot – it seemed more like a series of event that happened rather than a story. At times it felt like a list of issues the author wanted to highlight rather than a novel. But in spite of this I found it a highly compelling read.
I liked it very much. I know a lot of people who are Korean and I hope this book isn’t based on truth, but some of these stories about young women’s lives and what men do after work rings true. The ending seemed very abrupt.
This women’s fiction novel by Frances Cha tells the story of four different Korean women and their lives in Korean culture. It tells how beauty, cosmetic surgery, prostitution, wealth and K-Pop play a big roll in these women’s lives. I really enjoyed his great read. I rate this book a 5 out of 5 stars.
2.5 stars.
I have mixed feelings about this book. While it started off strong, I feel like it kind of sputtered out around the half-way point.
The book follows four young women all living in the same building, but one character (Wonna) feels completely unnecessary to the story. She interacts with the other three young ladies briefly at the end, but she ultimately has no place in the book. If you remove her entirely from the story, it would have absolutely no impact on the lives of the other women.
The other three women are all struggling with their jobs, money, vanity, and just day-to-day survival in the Gangnam District of Seoul. I started to become invested in these ladies and was looking forward to where the story would take them, but then things just got stale.
Miho’s relationships with Hanbin is completely one-dimensional. There’s some dinners and some dates (all forgettable) and her constantly turning down his request to see her work, but I never felt any real genuine warmth in their relationship. It’s like they were together out of convenience. The same feeling came across with Wonna and her husband, except the contempt she feels towards her husband is much more clear. Ara also serves little purpose in the story, and being mute, her character is pretty limited in where she can go. I felt Kyuri had the most fleshed-out story, though it too was a bit thin.
The ending was a complete let-down. So much is left unanswered. How did Miho’s relationship with Hanbin progress/end? Did Kyuri ever get the job and get out of the Salon Rooms? Where exactly did Wonna’s husband go, and was he ever coming back? Did ANYTHING AT ALL change in Ara’s life, because it sure didn’t sound like it! She ends the book exactly how she starts it, having made absolutely zero growth or progress throughout the entire book, which is kind of sad now that I think about it.
Overall, I don’t get the hype surrounding this book. It wasn’t terrible, but it’s not something I’d go out of my way to recommend.
Great characters and wonderful storytelling
Very interesting look at the darker side of South Korean society – the focus on women’s beauty (and obsession with plastic surgery) and the disparity in the lives of the wealthy versus the rest.