num_pages: 288
description: A 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. Even as a girl I knew the only chance I had was to change my face... even before a fortune-teller told me so. Kyuri is a beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a room salon an exclusive bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold clear-eyed approach to life an impulsive mistake with a client may come to threaten her livelihood.Her roomate Miho is a talented artist who grew up in an orphanage but won a scholarship to study art in New York. Returning to Korea after college she finds herself in a precarious relationship with the super-wealthy heir to one of Korea's biggest companies.Down the hall in their apartment building lives Ara a hair stylist for whom two preoccupations sustain her: obsession with a boy-band pop star and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that is commonplace.And Wonna one floor below is a newlywed trying to get pregnant with a child that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise and educate in the cutthroat economy.Together their stories tell a tale that's seemingly unfamiliar yet unmistakably universal in the way that their tentative friendships may have to be their saving grace.
language: English
title: If I Had Your Face
publisher: Ballantine Books