If I Had Your Face

A Novel

Frances Cha

This is a slice-of-life novel about four young women — best friends and casual saboteurs — who live in the same Gangnam district apartment building in Seoul. Reading this book is become an imaginary member of their dysfunctional found family.

The most beautiful and most troubled of the group is Kyuri. Thanks to multiple rounds of cosmetic surgery, she’s physically perfect. Her carefully constructed face and body have earned her a spot as a hostess at a room salon — a very exclusive, private bar where rich men pay for endless streams of alcohol and the attention of gorgeous women. Kyuri works in the 10-percent room, ‘a salon that supposedly employs the prettiest ten-percent of girls in the industry — where the madam isn’t blatantly pushing us to have sex with clients.’

Her roommate Miho is a gifted artist who grew up in an orphanage. She won a scholarship to study in New York where she became affianced to the scion of an ultra-rich Korean family known as a chaebol, the Korean word for a powerful, family-owned industrial conglomerate. Think Succession, and you’re on the right track.

Down the hall is Ara who lost her ability to speak in the aftermath of a traumatic event. She works as a hairstylist, but what she really cares about is the lead singer of a famous K-pop band. Each night, she dials a number into the phone to hear his recorded message to fans.

And finally, there’s Ara’s best friend Sujin. Her life’s dream is have enough plastic surgery to land a position in a 10-percent salon room. When she finally goes under the knife, the results are not what she hoped they’d be.

Each chapter is narrated by a different woman, and we follow the small adventures and heartbreaks of their days. The girls live in an office-tel, high-rise apartments that dot the landscape of Seoul. Their building, ‘Color House,’ is gray. As Miho, the artist, explains, ‘There isn’t a speck of color anywhere across the entire four stories and the rent is dirt cheap, but only on our floor.’ (The fourth floor being the Korean equivalent of the thirteenth in the United States, thanks to the Korean words for four and death being homophones of each other.)

Though the girls live in Gangnam, their corner of the stylish neighborhood is far from prestigious. ‘During the day ours is an ugly street, washed out and dusty with trash piled up and cars honking and trying to park in odd corners, but at night, the bars light up brilliantly with neon signs and flashing televisions.’

That’s a perfect example of how the book gives us access to a certain kind of life in Seoul. Our protagonists lounge around their apartments, eating ramen in front of the TV or nursing their morning-after headache with hangover stew. The glitter and shine are out there in the streets for others, but inside their apartments, there’s mostly drab routine and yearning.

The author Frances Cha was a travel and culture reporter for CNN in Seoul, and she does not candy-coat our characters’ situation. They live in an extremely capitalist, consumerist, patriarchal society in which physical beauty is prioritized over almost everything else.

In real life, South Korea ranks first in the world for cosmetic procedures per capita. Somewhere between 33- and 50-percent of women aged 19 to 29 have had at least one surgery. In the world of this book, plastic surgery isn’t only for the vain; it’s a requirement for social acceptance.

The grind of small and large humiliations these women suffer can be a lot, and were it not for the black humor and excellent writing, this book would be tough going. Cha gives that gray building in Gangnam three-dimensions; her dialogue has the ease of broken-in slippers. And the story is not without hope. As the narrative moves forward, the four women deepen their bonds with each other and their commitments to themselves. To be sure, the changes are incremental, but when the book ends, we know it’s not the end of their story.

The other day at my clinic, I finally saw the actual girl that I modeled my face after: Candy, the lead singer from that girl group Charming… I went to sit beside her because I wanted to see how clear the likeness was. I’d brought in photos of Candy’s face when I had my first consultations with Dr. Shim. She has a slight upturned bump at the end of her nose that makes her so uniquely, startlingly beautiful…

When the nurse called her name and she stood up to walk in, she turned to look at me and our eyes met, as if she could hear what I was thinking. I wanted to reach over and shake her by the shoulders. Stop running around like a fool, I wanted to say. You have so much and you can do anything you want. I would live your life so much better than you, if I had your face. — Frances Cha

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