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A riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania “Powerful and provocative . . . a novel about female strength, spirit, resilience—and the solace that friendship can sometimes provide.”—The Washington Post ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, Esquire, Bustle, BBC, New York Post, InStyle
Kyuri is an achingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a Seoul “room salon,” an exclusive underground bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake threatens her livelihood.
Kyuri’s roommate, 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 heir to one of the country’s biggest conglomerates.
Down the hall in their building lives Ara, a hairstylist whose two preoccupations sustain her: an obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that she hopes will change her life.
And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to have a baby that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise in Korea’s brutal economy.
Together, their stories tell a gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal, in which their tentative friendships may turn out to be the thing that ultimately saves them.
A riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania “Powerful and provocative . . . a novel about female strength, spirit, resilience—and the solace that friendship can sometimes provide.”—The Washington Post ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, Esquire, Bustle, BBC, New York Post, InStyle
Kyuri is an achingly beautiful woman with a hard-won job at a Seoul “room salon,” an exclusive underground bar where she entertains businessmen while they drink. Though she prides herself on her cold, clear-eyed approach to life, an impulsive mistake threatens her livelihood.
Kyuri’s roommate, 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 heir to one of the country’s biggest conglomerates.
Down the hall in their building lives Ara, a hairstylist whose two preoccupations sustain her: an obsession with a boy-band pop star, and a best friend who is saving up for the extreme plastic surgery that she hopes will change her life.
And Wonna, one floor below, is a newlywed trying to have a baby that she and her husband have no idea how they can afford to raise in Korea’s brutal economy.
Together, their stories tell a gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal, in which their tentative friendships may turn out to be the thing that ultimately saves them.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the bookAra
Sujin is hell-bent on becoming a room salon girl. She has invited Kyuri from across the hall to our tiny apartment, and the three of us are sitting on the floor in a little triangle, looking out the window over our bar-dotted street. Drunk men in suits stumble by, contemplating where to go for their next round of drinks. It is late and we are drinking soju in little paper cups.
Kyuri works at Ajax, the most expensive room salon in Nonhyeon. Men bring their clients there to discuss business in long dark rooms with marble tables. Sujin has told me how much these men pay a night to have girls like Kyuri sit next to them and pour them liquor, and it’s taken me a long time to believe her.
I’d never heard of room salons before I met Kyuri, but now that I know what to look for, I see one on every side street. From the outside, they are nearly invisible. Nondescript signs hang above darkened stairways, leading to underground worlds where men pay to act like bloated kings.
Sujin wants to be a part of it all, for the money. Right now she is asking Kyuri where she got her eyes done.
“I got mine done back in Cheongju,” says Sujin sorrowfully to Kyuri. “What a mistake. I mean, just look at me.” She opens her eyes extra wide. And it’s true, the fold on her right eyelid has been stitched just a little too high, giving her a sly, slanted look. Unfortunately, the truth is that even apart from her asymmetrical eyelids, Sujin’s face is too square for her to ever be considered pretty in the true Korean sense. Her lower jaw also protrudes too much.
Kyuri, on the other hand, is one of those electrically beautiful girls. 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. Long feathery eyelashes have been planted along her tattooed eye line, and she does routine light therapy on her skin, which glistens cloudy white, like skim milk. Earlier, she was waxing on about the benefits of lotus leaf masks and ceramide supplements for budding neck lines. The only unaltered part of her is surprisingly her hair, which unfolds like a dark river down her back.
“I was so stupid. I should have waited till I was older.” With another envious look at Kyuri’s perfect creases, Sujin sighs and peers at her eyes again in a little hand mirror. “What a waste of money,” she says.
Sujin and I have been sharing an apartment for three years now. We went to middle school and high school together in Cheongju. Our high school was vocational so it was only two years long, but Sujin didn’t even finish that. She was always itching to get to Seoul, to escape the orphanage that she grew up in, and after our first year she went to try her luck at a hair academy. She was clumsy with scissors though, and ruining wigs was expensive, so she dropped out of that too, but not before she called me to come take her spot.
I am now a full-fledged stylist and a few times a week Sujin comes into the salon where I work, at 10 a.m. sharp. I wash and blow-dry her hair before she goes to work at her nail salon. A few weeks ago, she brought Kyuri in as a new client for me. It is a big deal for smaller hair shops to snag a room salon girl as a client because room salon girls get their hair and makeup done professionally every day and bring in a lot of money.
The only thing that annoys me about Kyuri is that sometimes she speaks too loudly when she is talking to me, although Sujin has told her that there is nothing wrong with my hearing. Also, I often...
About the Author-
Frances Cha is a former travel and culture editor for CNN in Seoul. She grew up in the United States, Hong Kong, and South Korea. A graduate of Dartmouth College and the Columbia University MFA writing program, she has written for The Atlantic, The Believer, and the Yonhap News Agency, among others, and has lectured at Columbia University, Ewha Womans University, Seoul National University, and Yonsei University. She lives in Brooklyn.
Reviews-
February 15, 2020 A disturbing look at the unrealistic beauty standards placed on Korean women. Cha's timely debut deftly explores the impact of impossible beauty standards and male-dominated family money on South Korean women. Kyuri, Miho, Ara, and Sujin are two sets of working-class roommates who befriend each other, and Wonna is a married woman who lives on a different floor of the same apartment complex in Seoul. All are struggling financially. As Wonna laments, "Unless you are born into a chaebol family or your parents were the fantastically lucky few who purchased land in Gangnam decades ago, you have to work and work and work for a salary that isn't even enough to buy a house...." Because of Kyuri's successful plastic surgeries, men hire her to be their companion at after-work "room salons," giving her an enviable stock of designer purses and spending money. Sujin is saving up for surgery to attain the same face as Kyuri, but Cha shows how all the women are impacted by these standards. Ara's work as a hairdresser makes her literally invested in part of the beauty industry, and even though artist Miho hopes her talent will allow her to rise on her own, she finds herself dependent on the whims of a wealthy boyfriend. At times, the voices of the many characters can blur and the timeline can be confusing. Wonna is the least developed character and interacts with the others only in a plot twist at the end of the book. However, taken together, Cha's empathetic portraits allow readers to see the impact of economic inequity, entrenched classism, and patriarchy on her hard-working characters' lives. Cha grew up in the United States, South Korea, and Hong Kong and is a former Seoul-based culture and travel editor for CNN. Multifaceted portraits of working women in Seoul reveal the importance of female friendships amid inequality.
COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
February 24, 2020 Cha shines a light on the lives of four young women living in the same Seoul, South Korea, apartment building in her winning debut. In alternating chapters, each woman narrates her difficulties and offers insight on the others. Ara, a hair stylist who lost the ability to speak after a violent attack, is obsessed with a pop star. Kyuri, who undergoes plastic surgery to make her face resemble a member of a popular girl band, holds a coveted job in a “room salon” pouring drinks for men, and has become dangerously enamored of one of her wealthy clients. Miho, Kyuri’s roommate, an up-and-coming artist, strives to balance devotion to her work with a relationship to her unfaithful, ultra-rich boyfriend. Wonna, who was physically abused by the grandmother who raised her, is desperate to keep her pregnancy despite her husband’s uncertain finances. Cha navigates the obstacles of her characters’ lives with ease and heartbreaking realism, showing the lengths these women are willing to go to pursue their dreams in a country where they are told they “do not live for tomorrow.” This is an insightful, powerful story from a promising new voice.
Starred review from March 1, 2020 As former travel and culture editor for CNN in Seoul, U.S.-Hong Kong-South Korea-raised and Brooklyn-domiciled Cha writes exactingly of what she knows in her first novel. With unblinking focus, she confronts some of the darkest consequences of contemporary gender inequity by targeting the erasure of female individuality by oppressive beauty standards and expectations. Behind Korea's internationally coveted imports?especially K-dramas and K-pop?is an obsession with plastic surgery, complicated by one of the world's lowest birth rates and one of the highest suicide rates. Into that unforgiving society, Cha's magnificent tale introduces the women of Color House, an ironically all-gray Seoul apartment building. Four of its inhabitants take turns revealing their intertwined lives: hair stylist Ara, who lives with beauty-obsessed Sujin; their glamorous neighbor, Kyuri, who works in a room salon, where men spend substantially to drink with the city's most beautiful women, and where Sujin hopes for an introduction post-metamorphosis; Kyuri's roommate, Miho, whose art earned her an NYC education and relationship with an �ber-wealthy heir; and pregnant Wonna, who married the first and perhaps only kind man she's ever known and who hopes she doesn't lose another baby. Despite a society designed to stifle, these women manage to nurture mutual bonds for strength and survival.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
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