In If I Had Your Face Frances Cha uses the four main characters to explore the patriarchal hierarchy of South Korean society.

The author has managed to create fully formed characters who use beauty, violence and manipulation to navigate complex lives and establish their place in society. It is often a bleak read, but all of the characters have an innate sense of strength and self preservation that allows them to deal with abandonment, the need for physical perfection and family expectations.

This is a wonderful debut from France Cha and I am excited to read more of her work.

Set in Seoul, south Korea, we follow a circle of close female friends who know from a young age that to get on in life they will have to have facial surgery. These are not disfigured girls, this is the general practise of young Korean women. For such a small country, south Korea comes third in the world for the number of plastic surgery operations with over a million procedures per year.

The story follows each of the girls in turn and we learn of their early life as well as their working lives and friendships with each other. They are beautiful and superficial which in turn makes them unlikable as characters, yet their lives and cultural differences are intriguing and mesmerising.

Thank you Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read this e-arc.
This is a coming of age story of four Korean girls. The book tackles issues of patriarchy in a very interesting manner that kept me addicted to it. The characters were all interesting and unique, each with their own troubles. It is a multiple POV book and at times I did feel like it was bogging me down. Even though what these girls undergo personally is so alien to me, their journey was very relatable. One of the few negatives is that the writing was not working me and that can be subjective, but story was so captivating that I couldn't put the book down.

This one wasn't for me unfortunately. These sorts of books are a let down recently. I need to be more selective in what I request going forward.

A triumph. The exquisitely written sharp examination of womanhood in South Korea, If I Had Your Face is set to become a modern classic.
Using several focalisers (all women of different backgrounds and in different paths of life), Frances Cha gives an intelligent insight into the sexism of South Korean society.

This was a fantastic read. The intertwining points of view, the characters, the settings. I loved every moment of this book and found it hard to put down.

Frances Cha’s ‘If I had your face’ is a beautifully written novel, that left me suffering book grief when it finished.

Written from the perspective of four women, Kyuri, Miho, Wonna and Ara, along with their friend Sujin, ‘If I had your face,’ depicts the impact of a culture focussed on beauty, money and status. It is a life where a good marriage to someone in a prestigious company is the primary aim; even if that involves turning a blind eye to their infidelity and regular visits to the ‘room salons’ disguised as shops. It is a life where being called an orphan is a derogatory term, rather than something that demands sympathy. It is also a life where status is coveted, and guarded, making it ‘who you know’, rather than what you know.

I have read several books about North Korea but know very little about its southern counterpart. I therefore found myself regularly looking on the internet to see if Frances Cha’s story is complete fiction or based on truth. South Korea does indeed boast the highest number of cosmetic procedures per capita worldwide. Its birth rate is the lowest in the developed world and female suicide is the highest when compared to other OECD countries. Frances Cha is a former travel and culture reporter for CNN in Seoul, and she has woven her understanding of the country’s difficulties into this book.

Throughout, I was drawn into the lives of the characters. Particularly Wonna, an artist who tries to rebel against the demands made by others with respect to beauty and perfection but can only do so because she is beautiful. I enjoyed finding out about their lives and was satisfied by the ending, even though I did expect more of a conclusion. I guess that wouldn’t be true to life though!

I will definitely look out for more Frances Cha books in the future.

A wonderful, seeding debut - what it means to be a woman in today’s society; ridiculous beauty standards, societal standards - bad familial relations (if any) and the meaning of sisterhood.
We meet five women brought together through sheer luck (of where they live) it seems their lives would not have passed otherwise, and in doing so it means they teach one another about themselves. I loved it and can’t wait for more from Frances Cha!

If I Had Your Face was my favourite of the two books, but that might just have been because it was the first one I read. Flicking back and forth between the lives of four girls, all of whom live in the same Seoul apartment block, the story explores how women in South Korea make a living for themselves- and how their lives are often put aside in favour of men.

Make no mistake, this was bleak. But that’s what makes it riveting: the characters all have their own demons to contend with, from mute Ara to talented Miho, and their voices sing off the page in a way that makes you feel as though you’ve really gotten inside their heads. Though it’s a book that does contain plastic surgery, it’s used more as a way to explore the experience of being a woman in a still deeply-misogynistic country, many of whom are stuck in industries that are catering exclusively to men’s desires. The questions it throws up are problematic.

Though Cha’s writing style is clipped and short, it draws you in, and she does an excellent job of introducing readers to a world that can sometimes seem completely alien. I found it fascinating; the only thing I would say there needs to be more of is plot. Not to spoil too much, but the book leaves several characters threads hanging in a way that had me checking to see if the whole thing had been downloaded properly from NetGalley. Though that depends on what you want from a book!

I didn’t really know what to expect from this, but I really enjoyed it. It’s fascinating-a look into the different lives of 4 women in South Korea, and how cultural expectations of beauty, family, wealth and social standing weigh on everyone.

The way it’s written is very matter of fact, which is strange at first but adds to the feeling of being immersed in a completely different world.

The characters all live in the same building but their stories are told almost entirely independently, so it took longer than it might normally do to keep track of the details of each of their lives. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing-I think having them all be very close would be a bit contrived, given how different their lives are.
Overall I’d definitely recommend it.

I was initially attracted to If I Had Your Face due to the surge in the cultural phenomenon of plastic surgery in Korea. This, in itself, raises issues around self-confidence and the individuals' need to feel perfect. The popularity of plastic surgery in Korea is soon demonstrated within the novel to be a result of societal pressures, particularly on women, to match a certain idea of what it is to be a woman. The four main characters within this novel each struggle with the conflict of being happy yet also meeting societal ideals.

Kyuri entertains rich businessmen in 'salon rooms' and feels the need to spend a large amount of her money on plastic surgery in order to attract these men. This raises the patriarchal constraints upon Korean society, as it is clear within the novel that men dictate what is considered 'beautiful', which is further solidified due to their attraction to Kyuri and their disdain in the sight of a woman who is not yet healed from her own plastic surgery.

Wonna, though married, feels the increasing pressure to become a mother. This pressure is intensified due to her past with several miscarriages, leaving her to drive herself crazy in superstitious belief in the hope that this will save her unborn child.

The other characters in the novel explore their own harsh experiences within Korean society. The novel is an enlightening look into Korean society and the struggle of every-day people occupying it. The prose is even more shocking due to the lack of emotional detail from each character within it. We are given first person narratives, yet the narratives seem to be quite descriptive and intent upon providing essential details with a lack of emotion that isn't as often flaunted in Westernized narratives. This highlights the horrific normality of the pressures of the patriarchal society in Korea due to the lack of highly emotive responses.

Thank you to Penguin UK for the ARC.

'Unless you are born into a chaebol family or your parents were the fantastically lucky few who purchased land in Gangnam decades ago, you have to work and work and work for a salary that isn’t even enough to buy a house or pay for childcare, and you sit at a desk until your spine twists, and your boss is somehow incompetent and a workaholic at the same time and at the end of the day you have to drink to bear it all.'

If I Had Your Face (네 얼굴이 있다면) by Frances Cha paints a rather exaggerated, but still telling, picture of the life of young women in Seoul. It's essentially the Korean equivalent of portraying London life via TOWIE meets Man in Chelsea.

The main focus is on four girls, 수진, 규리, 아라 and 미호 living in a 오피스텔 in 강남구, out-of-towners with troubled backgrounds, and their lives that revolve around trying to date 재벌 scions or K-pop idols, working (or aspiring to work) in room salon hostess bars and an obsession with cosmetic surgery (rather like the US obsession with cosmetic dentistry):

'“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?” She studies herself in the mirror, tilting her head to the side until I right it again. “Are they perverted?”'

The novel's first person narration rotates between three of the characters (oddly not 수진).

A fifth resident in the same block is 원나, married, working, and after several miscarriages, now expecting her first child and dealing with both the difficulties of managing a career with children (albeit Korea unlike the US has mandated paid maternity leave) and the social pressure of aspiration:

'Bora sunbae is talking about how she “had to” book the kids’ suite and the children’s activities package at a hotel in Jeju.'

Although, for me, the inclusion of 원나's story rather diluted the book's focus and also invited an unfavourable contrast to Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982. I also found Mina by 김사과 a more literary and penetrating treatment of the strains of life for young people, albeit from the perspective of a younger and rather more studious generation.

2.5 stars

Thanks to the publisher via Netgalley for the ARC

Frances Cha’s impressive debut novel explores the lives of five women (four of whom are narrators) living in an office-tel building in contemporary Seoul.

Ara is a mute girl in her early twenties working as a hairdresser and fantasising about meeting a popular Kpop boy band singer. Her neighbour Kyuri has undergone several plastic surgeries in order to be beautiful enough to entertain rich men at a high end ‘room salon’. Miho is her flatmate and an artist dating an heir to one of Korea’s big corporations. Ara’s flatmate and best friend Sujin connects them, she grew up in an orphanage with Miho and befriends Kyuri whose bought beauty she sees as a ticket to a better life. On the floor below lives thirty-something Wonna, married, pregnant and desperately worried about managing financially once her baby is born. The novel follows them as they try to survive in the big city.

Their lives are not easy in a country where family background, beauty and education are seen as the guideposts for advancement and success for women, with a good marriage still being the pinnacle. Most had no means to go to university, coming from poor provincial families or orphanages so both Kyuri and Sujin see beauty and extreme plastic surgery as their only way up the socioeconomic ladder. University educated Wonna managed to secure an office job but it is a low paid, junior position. When her boss finds out about her pregnancy, she is ordered not to take more than 3 months maternity leave. Miho is a token orphan recipient of a prestigious scholarship to study art in the US selected primarily because the university was heavily criticised for only sponsoring rich kids. She befriends some of these rich kids while in New York, an heiress who commits suicide and whose privileged boyfriend she later dates but she has no illusions about belonging in his world. And Ara’s lack of opportunities is further confounded by her disability, the hair salon manager makes her juggle several clients at the same time while her junior assistant sniggers behind her back. The overall picture that Frances Cha presents is that of a very modern society but one that still sees women as inferior, especially if they come from poor or provincial families. In this, I found If I had Your Face similar to the excellent Kim Jiyuong, Born 1982 by Nam-Joo Cho, which will be published in March.

Frances Cha writes very well and has a lot to say about discrimination, inequality and society’s obsession with fame, wealth and beauty. This is a character driven novel, rather than one with an overarching story and this makes it more impactful. I found it absorbing, hard to put down and particularly liked its ambiguous ending. The characters were well developed and compelling although I’d have liked to see one point of view character from a different background for balance. Other than that, If I had your face is a great book and I’m looking forward to reading what Frances Cho does next.

Thank you very much Penguin Books, Viking and Netgalley for the advance copy!

I’ve been trying to get into different novels over the past few weeks but not getting far. If the subject matter doesn’t meet what I’m looking for in that moment, back it goes to the to-read bookcase. But If I Had Your Face was different.

This novel gripped me from the outset. At first, the concept of being “plunge[d] into the mesmerising world of contemporary Seoul” caught my attention and tempted me to request the novel. When it arrived, and I was pulled in, it became so much more than the subcultures of plastic surgery, ‘room salons’, and K-Pop stars.

Told by five women in alternating narratives (a literary trope that I’m a huge fan of since first reading Trumpet by Jackie Kay 15+ years ago), I found myself being both engrossed in their world(s) but also invested in what would happen and finding out what had happened to get them there.

Although the first few chapters felt that they could easily be standalone stories, the links between the women became clearer until the perfect last scene when they are pulled taut as they sit on the stairs of their apartment complex. Despite being worlds away, their stories were familiar and all-encompassing. I could see parts of myself. I could see parts of women I know. And that reflection drove me to read their stories, this novel, as quickly as I could.

The story of different women within one building and how their stories entangle, ‘If I Had Your Face’ is an exploration of Seoul that you do not see all that often, as we see the city through the eyes of different women as they grow up in a city that seems only just tolerate their existence.

The Male Gaze, negative body image, and misogyny that trickles through these women’s lives throughout the book demands your attention as these women combat it in their everyday lives - Miho and her hair/relationship, Nami and her body and how Kyuri is constantly trying to perfect herself to make sure she is a form of acceptable 'beautiful’ within the society she lives, it was uncomfortable sometimes, but good art does that.

The characters work together so incredibly well and tie together effortlessly, Cha creating a setting for all these characters in a way that so few can do so well creating an ending to this book that brings them together in union perfectly and it leaves me wanting to know what happened next to these women. (I wanna know Miho’s story next because I’m rooting for her!). This is not a book for happy endings, but about 100 pages in, you know that already.

If you want character driven stories that leave you breathless and not sleeping at 3am in the morning clutching your Kindle in despair, this is the book for you - every character is so alive in this book and it makes for such intense reading from start to finish and I loved it for it.

This is a book set in Seoul which features five young women living in an Officetel in contemporary Seoul. Four of them feature as alternating first party point of view characters.

Kyuri is a prostitute turned Ten Percent salon girl via sheer determination and copious amounts of plastic surgery. Miho an orphan who won an art scholarship to the US where she got involved with a Rich Korean artist (Ruby) and after Ruby’s suicide started dating Ruby’s rich Chaebol-heir boyfriend while using Ruby as a muse for her latest work. Ara’s parents work as servants on a large Hanok estate, she became a mute after an attack when she was at school and now works as a hairstylist – she is obsessed with the lead singer of a K-pop band. Wonna is married and desparate for a child although increasingly realising the economic challenge (if not impossibility) of having and supporting a child given her and her husband’s perilous economic situation. The fifth character Surin was a fellow-orphan with Miho (whose career she has always supported) and the middle-school friend of Ara (with who she now shares a flat) – her dream is to have surgery to become a top salon girl like Kyuri.

The style of the book is unremittingly bleak – all four characters could be said to fit the “unlikeable female” genre of say Eilleen Moshfegh (or perhaps more pertinently Patti Yumi Cottrell) – albeit in most cases with an obsession with beauty and appearance (rather than its opposite). It is I think deliberate that the only character with a balanced and optimistic view on life (if perhaps not with an ideal career aspiration) is the one not included as a POV character.

There are a number of aspects by which a book can be analysed: for example for literary fiction one can think of: use of language, detail of plot, characterisation and topicality/contemporary relevance.

The language in this book is simple – unusually I did not highlight any passages when reading the book for their turn of phrase or clever/unusual imagery.

Impressively though (and burnishing its literary credentials) this is not a book heavy on plot in the traditional set-up/confrontation/resolution approach. We are dropped into the character’s complex lives, with some glimpses into their difficult back stories and the challenges of their existing situation (but only via their first party, present day narration); and each of the characters faces something of a moment of confrontation/crisis; however there is little or no resolution – in fact all of the characters finish the book in a far more ambiguous and open ended situation than they started it.

By contrast the novel has a strong emphasis on character – all four first party narrators and the fifth linking character, are strongly drawn and memorable, and the switches of point of view are clear – even for a book that I read in a single sitting I never found myself double checking which character I was reading (which can commonly happen in this form of multiple POV novel). I also enjoyed the ways in which the characters secretly judge each other (for example Kyuri is horrified by aspects of Ara’s art, while Ara dismisses Kyuri as suffering from a victim complex).

In terms of topicality/contemporary relevance – I think the growing Western (and worldwide) Social-media lead interest in K-Pop (and in its darker side with the recent suicides) and K-beauty will gain this book a ready audience, and the title I think has been chosen to perhaps over-emphasise the extent to which this book is around beauty rather than a wider examination of society. However the picture it presents of Korean (and particularly Seoul) society is unremittingly bleak: a literally superficial view of beauty and character, characterised by almost routine use of plastic surgery; workplace bullying (verbal and physical) and sexism; a business based culture of evening alcoholism and use of prostitutes; infidelity; Chaebol-based corruption; rampant nepotism; property speculation; snobbery based on class, high school and region; discrimination against the unfortunate (orphans and disabled); generational conflict – particularly difficult mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflicts; increasing suicide rates and so on. Perhaps made more stark by the lack of any balancing aspects. All of this of course fitting the genre from which the book originates. My concern here is that while I don’t think anyone would think Moshfegh or PYC is presenting a rounded (as opposed to a deliberately and provocatively one-sided) view of American society – the relative lack of English language books exploring Korean society may mean that this book is taken as completely representative.

Overall I found this a bleak but engrossing read which I read in a single sitting.

My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via NetGalley.

Initially I was drawn to this book because of the cover but the story and characters quickly dragged me into the story. I love it, couldn’t put it down for long. Can’t wait to see what else comes from this author.

I didn’t know plastic surgery was SUCH a big thing in South Korea and after finishing the book I just had to googled it. Turns out that South Korea has the highest rate of plastic surgeries per capita in the world.

This book gave a glimpse into this sub-culture I knew nothing about and there was a vapid sadness to Kyuri, Sujin and Nami’s frantic search for validation in all the wrong places.

But the book also showed other young women like Ara who preoccupies her life with obsessing over a popstar to forget her unfulfilling life. Or Weenu, a throw away girl child ended up marrying a man just to feel a sense of belonging, desperate for a child of her own.

Weenu’s story also demonstrated just how much Korean women are discriminated against in the work place and Miho’s story showed the huge divide between the average Korean and the uber rich.

I think this book will appeal not only to adult readers but also young women on the brink of adulthood who are bombarded with images of glamour and wealth all day long via social media.

The writing is very easy to digest and an extremely fast read. Not necessarily a literary read but an engrossing one.

Recommended

This book is an exploration of life for young women in modern South Korea. The writing style is frank and refreshing and the women's characters are well explored, even though in the end that made me left wanting more...of their stories, some finality. It reads like it's 50 or 60 pages long which is a good thing and I'm left with a thorough understanding of the lives, thoughts and personalities of each of this women and where they fit into each other's lives.

If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha was an entertaining novel that allowed me a deeper glimpse into South Korean society, specially the huge amount of pressure women are under to look a certain way and to have achieved a certain status within a very narrow timeline.

The four women described here are all flawed like real human beings are and I was interested in their journeys, specially Ara's as her story allowed insight into how South Korean society deals with disability. Would definitely recommend this novel to anyone interested in South Korea.