Defined Beauty

Frances Cha grew up in the US, Hong Kong and South Korea, working for several years as a travel and culture editor for CNN International in Seoul and Hong Kong, where she covered many of the more extreme trends in pop culture and beauty for a global audience. The world’s ravenous interest in stories about the prevalence of plastic surgery, the obsession with K-pop stars and the competitiveness for a top-flight education went a long way towards informing her first novel, If I Had Your Face, which tells the stories of four young women in a fast-paced, ever-intense environment where appearances are literally everything. Cha puts the societal pressures and hierarchies of Seoul in a context that defies the reader to cast judgment on her characters.

Kyuri, whose face has been altered to fit an ideal picture, works in a room salon, a private bar where men pay for the company of beautiful women. Miho is an