Kyuri is a successful room salon girl who has had to undergo innumerable cosmetic procedures due to the ruthless competition in her field. Which neighborhood do you live in? Where did you go to school? Where do you work? Do you know so-and-so? They pinpoint where you are on the national scale of status, then spit you out in a heartbeat. That’s just the way it is in this country, and the reason why people ask a series of rapid-fire questions the minute they meet you. and the author does a great job of providing a glimpse at the difficulties and dilemmas faced by Korean women on a day to day basis.įor all its millions of people, Korea is the size of a fishbowl and someone is always looking down on someone else. It mostly focuses on its characters and doesn’t really have a traditional storyline.The writing is simple and almost conversational. It is raw and unsettling, sad and thought provoking but also insightful and enlightening. It explores the day to day lives of four Korean women, each extremely different from the other and tells their individual stories. If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha is a character oriented literary fiction set in contemporary Korea. Together, their stories tell a gripping tale that’s seemingly unfamiliar, yet unmistakably universal in the way that their tentative friendships may have to be their saving grace. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea’s biggest companies.ĭown the hall in their apartment building lives Ara, a hair stylist for whom two preoccupations sustain her: obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that is commonplace.Īnd Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to get pregnant with a child that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise and educate in the cutthroat economy. Her roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client may come to threaten her livelihood. Kyuri is a heartbreakingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a “room salon,” an exclusive bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink.

If i had your face ebook