It is actually a riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, and 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 also K-pop mania. The exact multifaceted portraits of working women in Seoul reveal the importance of female friendships amid inequality.
It helps readers to explore more about the impact of impossible beauty standards and male-dominated family money on South Korean women. The characters are 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.
These empathetic portraits in ‘If I Had You’ allow readers to see the impact of economic inequity, entrenched classism, and patriarchy on her hard-working characters’ lives. In addition to examining the country’s impossibly high beauty standards and obsession with appearances, the novel also takes aim at other societal constructs that are difficult to overcome, such as class, patriarchy, and inequality.
From this novel, people could realize that they are all to some degree is in abusive relationships with their own appearance and the world beyond. But with every punch, bruise, insult, degradation, and injustice, there is also mostly happiness. It would be such a battle-torn camaraderie, a joy in the blood and the fight.
Sources: The Guardian