![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Frances Cha’s poignant debut, If I Had Your Face, also skewers the social mores of modern Seoul, where women’s looks largely determine. The scathing cinematic satire Parasite turned its lens on late-stage capitalism in South Korea and won four Oscars. Navigating this cut-throat city are four young women balancing on the razor-edge of survival: Kyuri, an exquisitely beautiful woman whose hard-won status at an exclusive 'room salon' is threatened by an impulsive mistake with a client her flatmate Miho, an orphan who wins a scholarship to a prestigious art school in New York, where her life becomes tragically enmeshed with the super-wealthy offspring of the Korean elite Wonna, their neighbour, pregnant with a child that she and her husband have no idea how they will afford to raise in a fiercely competitive economy and Ara, a hair stylist living down the hall, whose infatuation with a fresh-faced K-Pop star drives her to violent extremes. Frances Cha's Korea-set novel dissects a culture’s obsession with the shiny and shallow. If I Had Your Face plunges us into the mesmerizing world of contemporary Seoul - a place where extreme plastic surgery is as routine as getting a haircut, where women compete for spots in secret 'room salons' to entertain wealthy businessmen after hours, where K-Pop stars are the object of all-consuming obsession, and ruthless social hierarchies dictate your every move. ‘If I Had Your Face’ explores women’s lives amid unnatural expectations. A glitteringly dark and unsettling debut novel about four young women struggling to survive in South Korea ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |