Reviews with content warning for Ableism - If I Had Your Face

So, the thing you need to understand about IIHYF is it's painfully short. I doubt it has more than 70k words, while having five main characters and four p.o.v.'s. So. Yeah.

The book got surprising amount of events and things happening on its pages, but not a lot of character development. Most of it is ambigiously left off screen. Did Ara realise something about the nature of parasocial relationship and consumption? Does Wonna have a chance of actually being a good mother in the future, or will her trauma ruin any of her children? Will Miho get over her friend's suicide, and what will it do to her? Will Seunjin regret going down the route of debt and prostitution? I don't know. I can only guess. Which kind of leaves me wondering what even was the point.

I love reading about the good, the bad and the ugly of different female experiences, so I was excited for this book. It gave of vibes of kind of an antithesis to girls' fairy tales and female wish-fullfillment fantasies. It's not _not_ that, but because it's not anything at all. I got attached to the characters and their lives, but the ending left me stumped. What did the book want to say? What was the point of me reading all that?

The book's redeeming qualities are being short and having good, flowing prose, but in the end, IIHYF is a snapshot of how it sucks to be a poor south korean woman, and it doesn't have anything more than that.

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liviamello's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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jrisants's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

I started this book having been warned that “it is not happy.” Overall I am struck by the scrappiness, confusion, and community that are born out of struggle. Even though on the whole the book is not happy, as it ended I could not help but reflect on how grateful I am for the ways that women will show up for each other, care for each other, and blend their lives together when the rest of the world fails them.

There is no true conflict or resolution in the book and it reads as vignettes from the lives of five women in South Korea, all of them with unfortunate childhoods. Their experiences can serve as cautionary tales for the ills born of sexism and classism, and the characters themselves sway between upholding these ideals, criticizing them, and suffering from them.

In one of the stories Miho is in New York navigating a world full of new cultural norms and surrounded by acquaintances who have already lived abroad and come from rich families. At a party she compliments the pink walls which were decorated by a Portuguese designer, and the compliment is brushed off and treated as against custom to speak about. Later Papa John’s is ordered for the guests and everyone responds excitedly to the food. Miho reflects to herself that she is learning you cannot compliment beautiful decor, but you can make a fuss over takeout food and that these are the things she is still trying to learn and navigate.

Miho also later discussed her experiences with other artists and how she assumes coming from a wealthy family means that you must be happy—but when she looks on the art of the wealthy students she sees deep despair, almost indicating that their suffering has been worse than hers.

At various points in the book there are deep comparisons between men’s experience compared to women, and the wealthy compared to those in poverty. Wrapped in these comparisons are the changed expectations and challenges of the young generation. We see this when Ara finally meets Tain and her idol is cruel abs ruins her perception of him. This plays out again with Kyuri and Bruce who is so nice to her at AJax and then violent when he sees her in his world. Wonna with her aunt and uncle, and even her husband who all have lives that she cannot touch and she seems to both idolize and resent them for it. Soogin is the only one who seems completely removed from these comparisons, seemingly having had a live that never invited her to mingle with those systemically better off than her. She also seems to be the force that knits these women together. She protects and sees power in each of the women, and she creates scenarios for them to pursue it. It is almost as if full acceptance of her position is what enables her to joyfully expect better and rebel against it.

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booksjessreads's review against another edition

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This is the second time I have tried to read this book and I really struggled to keep reading. I found the lack of a plot line difficult to follow. Despite this, I have annotated the hell out of the first 120 pages that I had read because there were some really interesting themes running through but I just felt as though this book was not for me

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brikui's review

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too many main characters, hard to keep up

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parton4proletariat's review

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emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I really liked this book! It was hard to remember who was who sometimes since its a large ensemble, but the characters were unique and had distinct voices. I particularly liked Ara and Miho, and I liked how complex Kyuri was.

my biggest critique of multi-perspective books is that it tends to make it difficult to connect with the characters. I did not have that issue with this book. I found myself caring about all of them.

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ankitapok's review

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dark hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Interesting read. The more I learn about it the more the South Korean beauty standards scares me. Hopefully these are exaggerated and it is not as bad in real life.

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