If you have heard of this book before, it is worth picking it up to get a little glimpse into the way life looks like in South Korea. There is something about happy people – their eyes are clear and their shoulders hang lower on their bodies. I could see their unusual brightness even from inside the house. I don’t remember it having so many shades of sound. Sometimes I wonder if I can hear better than before. Whereas the style didn’t necessarily stand out by being distinct, there were some passages every now & then, when you get to enjoy some creative expressions.
Whereas “Three Women” was written as non-fiction, Frances Cha managed to make her story much more believable and vulnerable, without touching upon all possible clichés within the lives of her four female characters. While reading “If I Had Your Face”, I felt some resemblance to the book “ Three Women“ I read earlier this year. “The thoughts of you alone in life, no children, that is what is making me old and sick.” p. “There is no greater sorrow than not getting married!” she says. When I looked into the mirror, I knew everything in it had to change, even before a fortune-teller told me so.
I knew the only chance I had was to change my face. 15Ībout half of our school got their eyes done that year because the teacher offered us a 50 percent discount. Her cousin still couldn’t feel her chin and had a hard time chewing, she said, but she had gotten a job in sales at a top-tier conglomerate. But a girl at the salon whose cousin got it done told me it took over a year for her to look normal.
4Įveryone’s recovery time varies wildly, they said. The stitches on her double eyelids look naturally faint, while her nose is raised, her cheekbones tapered, and her entire jaw realigned and shaved into a slim v-line. The most impressive parts of the narrative were about the extreme sides of the Korean society – relations between children & their parents, the expectations towards women to only become worthy once becoming a wife & a mother, as well as the biggest one of them – the beauty standards. It might be an interesting intro to such a foreign-feeling universe for those living in the Western world but it just felt a bit too flat in my point of view.Įven with the complex personal problems of each of the four main characters, it still keeps the feeling of a lighter novel that you can read in between and rather relax your mind than challenge it. More depth, to be more stylistically impressive and to be able to see more development of the characters. By the time I was done with it though, it has left me longing for more. This book was the first one that I read that gave an insight into South Korean life and its culture.
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