If I Had Your Face
A Novel
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3.0 • 11 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A riveting, feminist debut about four women navigating contemporary South Korea, a world of strict social hierarchies, extreme plastic surgery and K-pop fan mania.
"Even as a girl, I knew the only chance I had was to change my face. When I looked into the mirror, I knew everything in it had to change, even before a fortune-teller told me so."
This utterly compelling novel follows the interconnected lives of four young women balancing on the edge of survival in contemporary Seoul, Korea.
Kyuri is a heartbreakingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a "room salon," an exclusive bar where she entertains wealthy businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client one evening suddenly threatens her livelihood. Her roomate, 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 an impossible relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea's biggest companies. Down the hall from their apartment building lives Ara, a hair stylist whose obsession with a boy-band pop star drives her to desperate extremes. And Wonna, on the floor just below, is a newlywed trying to get pregnant with a child that she and her husband will not be able to afford to raise and educate in the cutthroat economy of Seoul.
Together, they give us a gripping picture of their unfamiliar world of cultural hierarchies, yet unmistakably universal in the ways their tentative friendships will prove their saving grace.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cha shines a light on the lives of four young women living in the same Seoul, South Korea, apartment building in her winning debut. In alternating chapters, each woman narrates her difficulties and offers insight on the others. Ara, a hair stylist who lost the ability to speak after a violent attack, is obsessed with a pop star. Kyuri, who undergoes plastic surgery to make her face resemble a member of a popular girl band, holds a coveted job in a "room salon" pouring drinks for men, and has become dangerously enamored of one of her wealthy clients. Miho, Kyuri's roommate, an up-and-coming artist, strives to balance devotion to her work with a relationship to her unfaithful, ultra-rich boyfriend. Wonna, who was physically abused by the grandmother who raised her, is desperate to keep her pregnancy despite her husband's uncertain finances. Cha navigates the obstacles of her characters' lives with ease and heartbreaking realism, showing the lengths these women are willing to go to pursue their dreams in a country where they are told they "do not live for tomorrow." This is an insightful, powerful story from a promising new voice.
Customer Reviews
this is not a window to korean culture
i barely made it through the sample. to be honest, it felt like torture. the characters are flat, could not feel one from the other. the on and on about plastic surgery and room salons was nothing but a snore and frankly sickening. i’m not against superficial talk if it feels like it’s going somewhere, or the story is a window into the lives of a certain kind of disadvantaged humans. it was neither. it just felt like sitting in a room listening to really stupid girls talk obsessively about nothing.
if you’re looking to gain some enlightening aspect of korean culture or modern korean lives, this is definitely not your book. these characters are a very specific group of people from the bottoms of society looking for easy escapes. that would be the most meaningful takeaway. overall, even this was poorly presented.
i found this pretty much on the level of “fiftly shades” another book i could not go beyond a few chapters. hey but, the world is random these days. perhaps this will become a huge seller and made into a movie. who knows, i sure don't