If I Had Your Face: A Novel Kindle Edition

I loved this book- I loved following each of the girls back stories up to present. Then suddenly the book ends abruptly. There is too much left to tell. I wanted more for this book, but ultimately, I did enjoy it so much so that I read it within the weekend finding trouble putting it down.

Frances Cha’s debut novel features Korean friends, Ara, Kyuri, Wonna, and Miho, as they struggle for another night of action in the competitive pursuit of men to support them. Multiple facial surgeries, suicides, abortions, showdowns with wives and madams, girl-gang fights, escaping orphanages; it’s all in a day’s work for these unlikely heroines. What you will not find in these pages is a neat little ending, tied up with a bow. In Cha’s world a life isn’t about its ending, but about its being lived, and these young women live life to the hilt. A graduate of Columbia’s Writing Program, Ms. Cha is a perceptive writer, which is a big help to a reader unfamiliar with this culture:• I had no idea what she was talking about, but I smiled so as not to dispel such heightened notions of me.• It’s basic human nature, this need to look down on someone to feel better about yourself. There is no point in getting upset about it.• I give the mom a hard once-over. She looks haggard, even under a full load of makeup.• I wish I could invite one or more of them over, but that would require me to possess an entirely different personality.• I hate Boston Asian food.• I was not supposed to be amazed by the unusual beauty of the apartment, but thick-crust pizza called for riots.• It’s amazing how much people talk about television.• I have always thought of hope as a natural folly of youth that should be discarded as soon as possible.• That kind of dosage is for people who have just given birth, he warned. What about people who will never be able to give birth? I wanted to ask.• She believes girls should operate like Venus fly traps, opening only for prey that can actually be caught.• When he finally ventured outside, people looked at him with a mixture of horror and blame and pity and thirst, and he had never known such combinations of expressions were possible on a human face.• I sit down on a stool and face him, trying to mimic the expression Kyuri has taught me for lulling a man into thinking he has your full attention.• And, actually, can you send someone to pick up an Italian sandwich from that sandwich place on the corner, the famous one? I forget the name.Ms. Cha’s book is the fourth novel workshopped at the Columbia Fiction Foundry to be commercially published, but the first to have acknowledged it. Thoughtful of a woman for whom the journey is everything.

As a person who was born and raised in South Korea, I was fascinated by this book from the first page. Of course, this is a novel. So, you cannot easily find someone like characters in the book in South Korea. But at the same time, with a pinch of poetic exaggeration, this story various dimensions of the Korean society. It is fabulous how Frances Cha weaves multiple social norms and cultural contexts into every scene.My only concern about this story is that… it might cause hasty generalizations about Koreans. This book sheds light on many unfavorable or distorted parts of the society, so it might help people who do not know much about South Korea to presume that most Korean women, rich guys, or students living abroad are like the figures in this book. That is not true. Of course, I think that there will be a person who has a similar life with a certain character, I can’t deny that. But I can see that a lot of figures in this book can be extreme examples to show the negative part of the society, and as far as this book was written in English, the readers will be primarily English speakers outside of the Korean society. I just wanted to ask the author considered that this book possibly creates or maximizes a few stereoabout South Korea.

I started reading this with very little knowledge of what it was about. At first I thought I may have to put it down. It seemed to run on a very superficial vein about plastic surgery and looks and the culture of room salon girls in Seoul. Although that is one theme, it certainly is shown to be something that is a form of sexism that the author feels exists but it is not something she supports. It seems more as if she is saying "this is what Korean women have to deal with, this value on a specific aesthetic and also the devaluation of their bodies and faces based on misogyny." Maybe I got that wrong but I didn't feel like she is supporting that. In addition, the big surprise was the friendship theme. These girls really have each others' backs. I loved the way the women bonded even in the culture that tries to pit them against each other and pull them down to a powerless position. One young woman in particular just seems to be impossible to beat down and constantly pulls her friends up with her. They make mistakes, they deal with the consequences and they push forward. I loved that resilience. Of course it's interesting to read about another city and culture, and some of it takes place in NY which is also interesting to compare to Seoul, but you never know how applicable this experience is to the rest of the population in these novels. In any case, the ending is hopeful and you feel like "life keeps moving, and people keep picking themselves up and brushing themselves off and striving for more". Finally the theme of having children is an interesting thread that runs through the book and is, possibly, one of the driving forces for writing it. "If I had your face", may be at least partly referring to the face of an infant on a sonogram photo of one of the women, and it is a reminder that not every title is an obvious reference. Overall, a different book than I am used to, but very good and I can't stop thinking about it, wanting more of these girls/women and their stories. One of my faves so far this year.

I had some difficulties with this book. First of all, I had a hard time getting into the story and liking the characters. It was just a bit too much of everything and became unnecessarily superficial. The story is about four different women and their fates. None of them were likeable to me, even though you definitely feel sympathy while reading. The story is kind of boring from the first page, although it is actually short. The book is sad and leaves you with a strange feeling. Mainly because,..SPOILERthe ending is completely open and meaningless. You don't know more at the end than you did at the beginning....

I confess that I abandoned this book in the middle. It felt very slow and boring.

great book. it offers a very interesting and in-depth insight into society and beauty standards in Korea. smooth writing style.highly recommended