If I Had Your Face - Frances Cha (Book)

Title: If I Had Your Face

Author: Frances Cha

Published: April 21, 2020

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Category: Literary Fiction / Contemporary Fiction / Feminist Fiction

Set in contemporary Seoul, If I Had Your Face follows four young women navigating a society obsessed with beauty, wealth, and status.

• Kyuri works at a high-end “room salon,” entertaining wealthy men. Her beauty, achieved through extensive plastic surgery, is both her asset and vulnerability.
• Miho, Kyuri’s roommate, is an orphaned artist who studied in New York. Upon returning to Korea, she enters a precarious relationship with the heir of a powerful chaebol family.
• Ara, a mute hairdresser, is obsessed with a K-pop idol and harbors deep emotional scars from a past trauma.
• Wonna, a married office worker, struggles with the financial and emotional strain of trying to conceive in a society that offers little support.

Through their intertwined lives, the novel explores themes of female friendship, societal expectations, and the pursuit of autonomy in a patriarchal culture.