Book Review: If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha

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Korean culture started 2020 on a media high when Parasite scooped four wins at the Oscars ceremony. Within weeks, the situation had taken a turn due to the Coronavirus outbreak that saw a global spike in racism aimed at the east and south-east Asian communities. More recently, the conversation has moved back to the positive, with praise for Korea’s collective efficiency in handling the health crisis when many countries have displayed more individualistic attitudes. 

A welcome tonic to this shifting attitude has arrived in the form of If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha, whose debut novel is a compelling portrayal of five South Korean women living in current day Seoul. Weaving their lives together with themes of unattainable beauty standards, traditional social codes, filial piety and terrible men makes for an enriching portrait of Korean society that will resonate with an international audience.

I spoke to the author Frances Cha earlier this year about her desire to correct cultural misconceptions, dynamics within female friendships and Korea’s relationship with cosmetic surgery. 

Frances’ continent-hopping, well-travelled childhood - she was born in the U.S., moved to Hong Kong at 8, then to the Korean provinces at 12 before returning Stateside for university - proved to be excellent preparation for writing about Korean women in a novel destined for an Anglophone audience with patchy knowledge of contemporary Korea. While early drafts of the novel featured more Korean vocabulary - in conversation Frances says she and her friends move easily between Korean and English - this was edited out with the realisation that it could prevent readers from connecting with the book. What remains can be easily understood within the context and definitely adds to the reading experience. 

Her time at CNN International, as a travel reporter covering South Korea and Hong Kong, was  a rich training ground for writing and editing that also allowed Frances to gather plenty of source material, which made its way into If I Had Your Face. Writing the book provided an opportunity to explore Korea’s cultural landscape in more depth while creating a story with Korean protagonists: something that Frances said she would have loved to read growing up but couldn’t, because those stories didn’t exist.

If I Had Your Face is a character-driven novel that focuses on five Korean women in their twenties: Ara is a mute hairdresser harboring a not-so-secret K-pop obsession; Kyuri has undergone multiple cosmetic surgeries to work in a top room salon (escort bars where powerful businessmen are entertained by young, beautiful women); Miho is an artist and natural beauty, with a super-rich boyfriend whose family rejects her; Wonna is recently married and struggling to have a child while being unfulfilled at work; Sujin lives with Ara and has cosmetic surgery in hope of becoming a room salon girl, too. With no explicit narrative of her own, Sujin is brought to life through the other women’s eyes. 

The women live in the same apartment building and lack any wealth or status within a class-obsessed society, making them hyper-aware of others. Frances explained this to me as nunchi, a particular Korean concept of situational awareness that is often used with a view to fitting-in to desirable social environments. This social pressure is compounded by the fact that Korea is one of the most educated countries in the world, as well as the most digitally connected, which leads to a highly competitive mindset - with no wealth or social status to fall back on, it’s understandable that these women possess nunchi in spades.

Miho, the artist, judges her new flatmate Kyuri, the room salon girl, as shallow. Kyuri doesn’t think that Sujin has what it takes to become a room salon girl. Ara believes Miho to be incredibly naive because of her artistic status; they all view Wonna as a little drab, and so on. It’s an honest look at how women judge their friend’s life choices - thinking they would handle things better - and underlines how beauty is so often the ultimate currency for women to get by.

The characters are well-developed and complex, with their lives becoming more intertwined as the novel progresses in a way that feels organic and therefore relatable. The final scene is a beautiful tribute to the power of female friendship and how it transcends our apparent differences: a comforting reminder following a challenging period of separation for many. 

Frances’ book delivers some significant takeaways. For example, Korean attitudes towards cosmetic surgery differ significantly from those in the West, where it’s considered vain and therefore results in few people admitting to having procedures. In Korea, looking better can drastically change your love life, your career prospects or your social status. Surgery is more of a practical decision and is not taken lightly by those who consider having it, especially as it often means getting into debt. The room salon culture deserves an article of its own: it is never spoken about in polite society yet it’s where many business deals take place between men, in effect firmly shutting out their female colleagues. 

If I Had Your Face is a touching love letter to Korea that will leave you wanting more. It’s also eye-opening and moving and funny without ever being heavy-handed in delivering cultural insights. Frances Cha joins an expanding group of contemporary Korean feminist authors (Élisa Shua Dusapin, Park Wansuh, Cho Nam-joo and Han Kang) who are using the medium of literature to examine misogyny and societal violence towards women. By providing a much-needed contribution to the global feminist conversation, these women are defying a culture that would prefer them to stay quiet. 

IIHYF available exclusively from Waterstones U.K. Available from all other retailers on 23 July. 

FURTHER READING:

Book ReviewThe FBC ParisFrances Cha, If I Had Your Face, South Korea, Female Friendship