Her roomate, Miho, is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake with a client may come to threaten her livelihood. Kyuri is a heartbreakingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a “room salon,” an exclusive bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink.

“Even as a girl, I knew the only chance I had was to change my face… even before a fortune-teller told me so.” And perhaps that is Cha’s prescience-while beauty culture might appear to be a social leveler it is still just a façade of upward mobility.A riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossibly high standards of beauty, secret room salons catering to wealthy men, strict social hierarchies, and K-pop fan mania. Thus, South Korean women, even those who have the appearance of success lack the financial stability to go along with their physical success markers. It is also worth noting that South Korea has the lowest birth rate (1.1 per family) worldwide. Millennials like the main characters are opting out of both marriage and childbearing, as both are on the decline in South Korea according to sociologist Yue Qian. But here’s where the movie and the book divide-the marriage rate and low birth rate resonate in If I Had Your Face. For example, despite Kyuri’s seeming success in her industry, she is financially beholdened to her “madam” and also indicates the fleeting nature of her cosmetic surgeries that require “refinements.” Like the Kims prior to their employment schemes, the women in Cha’s book seem stuck within the lower-middle-class society in Seoul. While If I Had Your Face has none of the dark criminal elements behind Bong Joon’s award-winning film, it does demonstrate a similar sort of economic stratification.

If i had your face book