Cha’s background as a former travel and culture editor for CNN in Seoul serves her well as she vibrantly brings the city and country to life. And her excellent depiction of how difficult it is for young South Koreans to get ahead will likely resonate with American millennials and members of Gen-Z for whom home ownership, professional advancement, and a debt-free adulthood seems elusive, especially now. There are, however, a few instances when the novel attempts to incorporate one too many familiar Korean headlines (K-pop obsession, the country’s low birth rate); and some plotlines feel a bit underwhelming once finally realized. Thankfully, these are minor exceptions in an otherwise powerful and provocative rendering of contemporary South Korean society, one that might be considered bleak if not for the women themselves, who occasionally surprise with their compassion and bravery.
If you’re on a post-Parasite hunt for more South Korean culture, Frances Cha’s fascinating debut novel is just the ticket ... While the title seems to refer to these literal coveted faces, Cha’s portrait of her characters’ lives and connections is anything but superficial. There’s so much to delve into...If some plot lines are left unresolved, Cha’s point is not to provide fairy tale endings but to suggest that nothing is more essential and life-affirming than the connections between women.
Frances Cha’s debut is filled with biting commentary about the position in which women find themselves in modern South Korea. With such an onus on appearance and social rank, women’s lives come to be dominated by envy, and our main characters are no exception. Each one of them, through their narratives, seems suspended in space, desperately grabbing out for something unreachable, believing that getting a hold on that whatever is missing will fill the hole inside of them. Ms. Cha’s debut has the potential to provide a window into South Korean culture for the uninitiated, highlighting its richness as well as its problems. The book, for all its sharp wit and acerbic asides, is breezily and delightfully readable, perfect for a one-sitting binge. Wanting only for more differentiation between the character voices and a separate perspective of the group’s keystone friend, Sujin, Frances Cha has given us a novel to write home about.
... a fierce social commentary about gender roles, class divisions and, yes, plastic surgery in South Korea ... The women in Cha’s novel all deal with very real issues, but don’t need their parents, boyfriends, husbands or bosses to save them. They have each other.
When you begin reading If I Had Your Face it isn’t difficult to see why it comes garlanded with praise on high from the literati ... Depending on how you read this novel it could either be a horrifying insight into contemporary Korean society or, and this was how I read it, a gloriously camp celebration of the excesses of a deranged society – Jackie Collins meets Margaret Atwood ... Kyuri is captivating and ludicrous, much like the novel itself ... one of the most 'current' characters that I’ve come across in fiction this year ... However, all the novel seems to have is its characters. It would take a critic far more skilled than myself to glean something resembling a plot from If I Had Your Face. Instead, Cha decides to interweave her four narratives somewhat haphazardly into something that only resembles a plot. It is incredibly difficult to lattice narratives like this, and Cha must be commended for taking on such a meticulous form of storytelling, even though the final narrative resembles less the egg-washed top of a cherry pie than the tangled mass of tails that forms a rat king ... It is difficult to judge the tone of Cha’s novel. Is it a critique or a celebration of these women?...The novel’s unwillingness to pick a side greatly affects its overall intensions. It is a truly ambivalent work, a sort of literary version of the baby inside Brecht’s chalk circle being tugged and pulled by two opposing forces ... Yet it is impossible to deny that If I Had Your Face is immense fun. It presents a world so heightened and over the top that you can’t help but marvel at it. Cha’s prose style is also very breezy and light, which aids in the novel’s easy digestibility. And digestibility is key here: the book has been designed within an inch of its life to be a bestselling, finger on the pulse, incredibly 2020, conversation-starting, bookstagram-ready, novel of the moment. And good for it ... hyperreal kitsch. An enjoyably soapy glimpse into a world where 'beauty is only skin deep' is an aspirational mantra rather than a disparaging read. And in tribute to the novel’s ambivalent message, I shall finalise my thoughts in a line that entirely depends on the reader’s tastes: it’s Valley of the Dolls for the K-pop generation.
... vivid ... It occasionally feels like Cha lines up the relentless, contradictory pressures women face in South Korea in order to inflict them one by one. But her writing always crackles: it’s gripping as well as grisly, and flashes of real friendship and solidarity amid Seoul’s neon glare are more touching for being an enormous relief. A compelling, icily cool exposé of the unceasing quest for self-advancement when the economic odds are stacked against you.
As former travel and culture editor for CNN in Seoul, U.S.-Hong Kong-South Korea-raised and Brooklyn-domiciled Cha writes exactingly of what she knows in her first novel. With unblinking focus, she confronts some of the darkest consequences of contemporary gender inequity by targeting the erasure of female individuality by oppressive beauty standards and expectations ... [a] magnificent tale ... Despite a society designed to stifle, these women manage to nurture mutual bonds for strength and survival.
...[a] disturbing look at the unrealistic beauty standards placed on Korean women ... Cha's timely debut deftly explores the impact of impossible beauty standards and male-dominated family money on South Korean women ... At times, the voices of the many characters can blur and the timeline can be confusing ... However, taken together, Cha's empathetic portraits allow readers to see the impact of economic inequity, entrenched classism, and patriarchy on her hard-working characters' lives.
...[a] winning debut ... Cha navigates the obstacles of her characters’ lives with ease and heartbreaking realism, showing the lengths these women are willing to go to pursue their dreams in a country where they are told they 'do not live for tomorrow.' This is an insightful, powerful story from a promising new voice.
