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A review by corsetedfeminist
The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This book is deeply unnerving but somehow also very cathartic in an unexpectedly delightful way.
Our main character, Ji-won, is simultaneously very relatable and likable and also unsettling and unpredictable. She is the oldest child of Korean immigrants who have separated just before the book begins, and her character struggles throughout with the pressure of providing for her mother and sister, processing her father leaving and her mother’s resultant breakdown, and struggling to pass her college coursework and make friends. She is smart, sassy, very blunt, and shamelessly manipulative. For all her faults, her protective love of her sister redeems her character to a large degree.
This book does a good job of blurring the lines between reality to the extent that I’m not sure how much of what Ji-won sees is a hallucination that she genuinely thinks she saw and how much is her own daydreams about what she wishes would happen. Regardless, Ji-won’s gradual loss of her grip on sanity is extremely well written.
The brilliance of this book is that most of the horror is far too realistic. Middle aged white men who fetishize and take advantage of Asian women are unfortunately very real as are annoying men who pretend to be friends with a girl because they have ulterior motives. Those horrors are presented in their bleak reality, no embellishment needed.
The body horror is also presented very matter of factly, which works quite well in context- this probably goes without saying, but if you can’t do eyes and cannibalism, this is not the book for you.
In short, this book does a fantastic job of discussing the intersection of racism and sexism within the context of a blunt horror story that provides very satisfying catharsis by the end… if Ji-won hadn’t killed off George by the end, I would have thrown myself into the book pages to do it myself.
Our main character, Ji-won, is simultaneously very relatable and likable and also unsettling and unpredictable. She is the oldest child of Korean immigrants who have separated just before the book begins, and her character struggles throughout with the pressure of providing for her mother and sister, processing her father leaving and her mother’s resultant breakdown, and struggling to pass her college coursework and make friends. She is smart, sassy, very blunt, and shamelessly manipulative. For all her faults, her protective love of her sister redeems her character to a large degree.
This book does a good job of blurring the lines between reality to the extent that I’m not sure how much of what Ji-won sees is a hallucination that she genuinely thinks she saw and how much is her own daydreams about what she wishes would happen. Regardless, Ji-won’s gradual loss of her grip on sanity is extremely well written.
The brilliance of this book is that most of the horror is far too realistic. Middle aged white men who fetishize and take advantage of Asian women are unfortunately very real as are annoying men who pretend to be friends with a girl because they have ulterior motives. Those horrors are presented in their bleak reality, no embellishment needed.
The body horror is also presented very matter of factly, which works quite well in context- this probably goes without saying, but if you can’t do eyes and cannibalism, this is not the book for you.
In short, this book does a fantastic job of discussing the intersection of racism and sexism within the context of a blunt horror story that provides very satisfying catharsis by the end… if Ji-won hadn’t killed off George by the end, I would have thrown myself into the book pages to do it myself.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Body shaming, Gore, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Cultural appropriation, Toxic friendship, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism