If I had your face

Resource Information

The work If I had your face represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Vancouver Public Library, Britannia Branch (Open with Limited Services). This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

If I had your face

Statement of responsibility

Frances Cha

Creator

• Cha, Frances

Author

• Cha, Frances

Subject

• Feminist fiction
• Korea (South) -- Social life and customs -- 21st century -- Fiction
• Korean fiction
• Neighbors -- Korea (South) -- Fiction
• Body image in women -- Social aspects -- Korea (South) -- Fiction
• Women -- Korea (South) -- Social life and customs -- 21st century -- Fiction
• Female friendship -- Fiction

Genre

• Korean fiction
• Fiction
• Feminist fiction

Language

eng

Summary

A riveting, feminist debut about four women navigating contemporary South Korea, a world of strict social hierarchies, extreme plastic surgery and K-pop fan mania. "Even as a girl, I knew the only chance I had was to change my face. When I looked into the mirror, I knew everything in it had to change, even before a fortune-teller told me so." This utterly compelling novel follows the interconnected lives of four young women balancing on the edge of survival in contemporary Seoul, Korea. Kyuri is a heartbreakingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a "room salon," an exclusive bar where she entertains wealthy businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client one evening suddenly threatens her livelihood. Her roommate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college, she finds herself in an impossible relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea's biggest companies. Down the hall from their apartment building lives Ara, a hair stylist whose obsession with a boy-band pop star drives her to desperate extremes. And Wonna, on the floor just below, is a newlywed trying to get pregnant with a child that she and her husband will not be able to afford to raise and educate in the cutthroat economy of Seoul. Together, they give us a gripping picture of their unfamiliar world of cultural hierarchies, yet unmistakably universal in the ways their tentative friendships will prove their saving grace

Cataloging source

NLC

Dewey number

813/.6

Index

no index present

LC call number

PS3603.H25

LC item number

I38 2020

Literary form

novels

Target audience

adult