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mrpitmansgranddaughter 's review for:
If I Had Your Face
by Frances Cha
This is a fascinating exploration of beauty and women in Korean culture. The book introduces us to four different women with overlapping lives, and explores their lives both individually and together. It is brilliant at exploring the lesser known (to me at least) beauty culture in Korea. Korean beauty has influenced the western beauty market for a while now, including the sheet mask phenomenon and the 10 step skin care routine. Naively I never explored more of the beauty phenomenon and so this book was an interesting dive into the more extreme side.
It isn't only about beauty, it is also about the class system, sex working and sexism. Which makes for a book rich in themes and topics to digest. For this reason I so wanted this book to be double the size, I feel we only just scratched the surface, I was fascinated with each character but as I came to the end of the book I hadn't been able to get deep enough and understand each of the characters enough especially to explore some of their motives to their choices and actions.
I ended up being most invested in Kyuri, her journey, her surgeries, her relationships. She was a really intriguing character and I could have happily read a book all about her. Wonna felt like a bit of an obscure addition considering the background and friendships of the other three. I really enjoyed her and her story, it felt like an important one to tell, but I felt the book ended just where were about to understand why she was the fourth character in the book. Ara was so different to read, and I just wanted more depth to her, I don't know that I liked her but I wanted to know more. I did form an attachment to Miho - there was something special about her.
There were so many interesting themes to this book but greedily I wanted more. This book was impressive, left me thinking for a long time afterwards and even doing further research ... part two please, pretty please.
It isn't only about beauty, it is also about the class system, sex working and sexism. Which makes for a book rich in themes and topics to digest. For this reason I so wanted this book to be double the size, I feel we only just scratched the surface, I was fascinated with each character but as I came to the end of the book I hadn't been able to get deep enough and understand each of the characters enough especially to explore some of their motives to their choices and actions.
I ended up being most invested in Kyuri, her journey, her surgeries, her relationships. She was a really intriguing character and I could have happily read a book all about her. Wonna felt like a bit of an obscure addition considering the background and friendships of the other three. I really enjoyed her and her story, it felt like an important one to tell, but I felt the book ended just where were about to understand why she was the fourth character in the book. Ara was so different to read, and I just wanted more depth to her, I don't know that I liked her but I wanted to know more. I did form an attachment to Miho - there was something special about her.
There were so many interesting themes to this book but greedily I wanted more. This book was impressive, left me thinking for a long time afterwards and even doing further research ... part two please, pretty please.