Ara, their neighbour, is a hair stylist, obsessed with a K-pop band, and mute following a traumatic incident. Here, her life ‘became tragically enmeshed with the super-wealthy offspring of the Korean elite’, something which follows her when she moves back to Seoul after graduating. Miho, Kyuri’s flatmate, is an orphan, given a scholarship to a prestigious art school in New York. Her ‘hard-won status’ at the salon is affected, around the halfway point of the novel, when she makes a mistake with a client, which reverberates through the salon. Kyuri works at a ‘room salon’, where wealthy businessmen go to be ‘entertained after hours’.

At the heart of If I Had Your Face is the competitiveness which is found at every level of society in Seoul, and the way in which it captures and suffocates people. Seoul is a place where ‘plastic surgery is as routine as getting a haircut… and ruthless social hierarchies dictate your every move.’ The novel circles around the concept of physical beauty, which can affect your life in South Korea just as much as a premium education does unless you are lucky enough to attend one of the premium universities in the country, it is almost impossible to work for a top company, or to progress to an executive level. It focuses upon four young women, who are ‘struggling to survive’, and are ‘balancing on the knife-edge of survival’ on the fringes of the city. If I Had Your Face is set in contemporary Seoul, South Korea.

If i had your face novel