# ReadAroundTheWorld #South Korea

This debut novel by Frances Cha who grew up in the US, Hong Kong and South Korea, features the lives of five young women living in an apartment block in contemporary Seoul.

The story’s chapters shift between the perspectives of four of these women. Kyuri works at a “room salon” or an exclusive bar entertaining businessmen, a job she has literally carved out for herself with repeated plastic surgery to model herself into an ideal Korean beauty. Her roommate Miho is an artist who grew up in an orphanage, and is currently dating the super wealthy …Ara is the hairstylist who works presenting the flawless Kyuri. She is non-verbal since a traumatic event in highschool, and spends her spare time following K-pop boy-band star Taein. Ara’s best friend Sujin is saving up to have her face dramatically rearranged into the current ideal of beauty so she can also work at a room salon. Wonna is desperately trying to carry a pregnancy to term and deal with the huge financial stresses that accompany raising a child. She also faces huge discrimination against women in the workplace, practically being forced to give up her entitlement to maternity leave just to keep her job.

This book is more character than plot driven, and gives us an insight into each woman’s past and current challenges. It also provides a view of modern South Korea with its classicism, materialism and overblown excessive beauty ideals and industry. The men in the story are not romantic heroes and rescuers, but rather an ugly amorphous mass of lustful monsters perpetuating the exacting standards of beauty and financially controlling women. I found this book hard to get into initially with its focus on the superficial and superfluous, but as it went on I found it a sad snapshot of life, that was both revealing and poignant. ( )

Sharp hard commentary, I appreciate who was centered and who was marginalized, and by the end I was truly invested in these characters. I want to know where they are now. Oh I know some people read for that, but I don't, so well done bringing me in. ( )

A thoroughly engrossing and superbly written novel! I devoured this in a couple sittings-there was never an uninteresting moment. "If I Had Your Face" follows the lives of 5 young women (4 have POVs) living in modern South Korea in the same apartment building. Each are dealing with the stresses of being a woman and the, more often than not, unfair expectations placed upon them. They are expected to dress, act, look, talk, walk, work, and marry all in very specific ways, and not doing so throws them further into the cutthroat society where they are picked apart or discarded entirely.

I recently had read Robin Ha's autobiographical graphic memoir, "Almost American Girl", and wanted to learn more about life in South Korea, and I thought this was an astoundingly intimate and insightful look into what it's like. Although I knew a little bit about things such as emphasis on plastic surgery and idol obsession, there was so much more I didn't know about or even consider, like how maternity leave is viewed in comparison to the USA, about the room salons like where Kyrui works, and how the adult-child relationships vary. All of this info, in addition to Cha's writing style, made the book super immersive.

(minor spoiler warnings for this paragraph)
My favorite aspect of the book was the friendship that grows between the women. Although at times it is tenuous, it is written with such heart and ferocity! Cha really does a wonderful job at showing the ups and downs of friendship, and that beautiful bond of girls looking out for each other. Each of these women to some extent have experienced that dread of feeling like they have an "expiration date", a time when society will deem them too far gone or too old or too saggy to be worth anything, but ultimately they find comfort, solidity, and happiness in each other, and I LOVE that. I love that the toxic men in each of their lives were shed by the end of the novel and they instead were brought closer to one another.

I would have loved another 100 or so pages in the book, especially because a couple of the arcs felt a TEENY bit unfinished. Overall a little more meat on this books bones would have paid off, but the story is still SO well done. Plus, Cha also made it pretty obvious how things were going to work out so I'm satisfied with that ending! (although I would have loved to see Miho finish her revenge)
"If I Had Your Face" is an absolute recommend from me, and I can't wait to see what Cha does next. I'll definitely be reading it. ( )

This book ( )

Excuse me while I go cry because this book crushed me but also made me hopeful. ( )