57 pages • 1 hour read
Frances ChaIf I Had Your Face
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 13-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary: “Ara”
Sometime in the middle of the night, Ara is woken up by the sound of a woman screaming. Ara texts Sujin, Kyuri, and Miho to ask if any of them know what is happening, but only Miho responds stating that she is on her way home. Ara asks if it could be the couple downstairs arguing, but Miho claims she saw the husband leaving the home earlier with several large suitcases. Ara decides to go see what is happening. Ara follows the sound downstairs and knocks on Wonna’s front door.
Wonna answers the door, crying and in pain, and Ara helps her to sit down. Ara pulls her phone out and begins typing a message to Wonna, asking her if she needs to go to the hospital. Wonna states that she wants to wait a while longer because she is scared that if she goes to the hospital, they will kill her baby. Miho arrives and asks Wonna if she is okay. Wonna seems to be feeling a little better and drinks some hot water. Wonna apologizes for disturbing them and thanks them for helping her.
The next day, Kyuri texts Ara that there is a rumor that Taein will be at Ajax tonight with his manager. Kyuri tells Ara to come because the madam will not be there, and she can sneak her in. Ara immediately springs into action, borrowing clothes from her roommates and canceling the rest of her clients for the day. When she arrives at Ajax, Kyuri is drunk, but confirms that Taein and some of his friends are in one of the rooms. Kyuri leads Ara into the room and introduces her as a fan of Taein’s. Taein’s friends groan, stating that Taein can’t stand his fans, which he shyly denies.
Kyuri sits Ara down beside Taein. When his manager asks Ara for her name, Kyuri responds, stating that Ara is unable to speak. The men around the table start to make jokes, degrading Ara and embarrassing her. Sujin suddenly walks through the door and rushes to Ara’s side. The men become frustrated and demand that Kyuri call the madam. Kyuri pulls Ara and Sujin from the room; Ara realizes Taein had not acknowledged her once as they flee from Ajax. Ara thinks about her accident and how Sujin had run beside her, just as she is now, holding her hand after she’d been almost beaten to death by a rival gang from another school.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Kyuri”
Three weeks later, Kyuri and Sujin are eating at a samgyeopsal restaurant late into the night. Sujin is having a hard time eating after her surgery; her jaw is numb, and she often has a hard time knowing when something dribbles down her chin. Kyuri notices that most of Sujin’s swelling has gone down and that she has become extremely beautiful. Sujin has begun working as a freelance room salon girl who fills in at the room salons when they are short staffed.
Sujin tells Kyuri that she should find a different job, stating that she seems extremely stressed. When Kyuri asks if Sujin is also thinking about finding a different job, she states that it is different for her because she is still enjoying feeling pretty. They talk about Miho and how she doesn’t seem to be handling the stress of her impending breakup with Hanbin well. Sujin reveals that she was the one who convinced the Loring Center to apply for the arts scholarship in New York for Miho.
Sujin moves on, telling Kyuri that she was at the Cinderella Clinic earlier and overheard that one of the managers there had moved to an up-and-coming clinic. Sujin told Dr. Shim, the surgeon who’d done all Kyuri and Sujin’s cosmetic surgeries, said that Kyuri would be the perfect replacement for her. By the time they return home, Sujin is still trying to convince Kyuri to talk to Dr. Shim about the job. Miho returns to the apartment, her hair now cut to her shoulders.
The following Saturday, Kyuri goes to the Cinderella Clinic and meets with Dr. Shim. Later that night, Kyuri picks Sujin and Ara up from a new gaming park that was created by Bruce’s company. Ara, after the incident with Taein at Ajax, has stopped listening to Crown and become obsessed with a new video game. When they return home, they run into Wonna on the stairs of their apartment. The women decide to order fried chicken. Wonna shows the girls a photo from her ultrasound, and they each stare at it in wonder. Kyuri wonders what it is like to think about the future rather than just taking life one day at a time. Miho joins them, and as they prepare to go inside, rain begins to slowly fall upon them.
Chapters 13-14 Analysis
Chapter 13 opens with Ara laying in the living room watching reruns of idol TV shows. She thinks about the dating controversy surrounding Taein and his rumored girlfriend Candy. She becomes angry, stating that “I have to resort to watching reruns for the eightieth time. This is all Candy’s fault and I usually fall asleep fantasizing about her getting blocklisted from every network in the country,” (234). Ara here focuses her frustration at not attaining the object she feels will put her life in place on Candy. Ara’s fixation on Taein and her apparent rage toward his real-life relationship emphasizes the dangers of parasocial relationships. While starting out as harmless escapism, these relationships can make people feel they know a celebrity better than they do and foster antagonistic thoughts. Ara perceives Candy as the reason she can’t make Taein a permanent fixture in her life, when in reality, both Taein and Candy have consented to be in a relationship with each other. Even if Taein were attainable for Ara, Ara has built an image of him in her mind that might be far from reality. This moment also shows that gender inequality impacts women more than it impacts men; instead of being angry at Taein for his perceived transgression, Ara directs her anger toward Candy.
Ara runs downstairs when she hears Wonna screaming. When she arrives, she realizes that Wonna is pregnant and notes that there is “Not a single baby thing anywhere, although I did hear that people do not like buying things early for fear of bad luck […] Tempting the gods with the assumption of happiness” (239), which alludes to Wonna’s “bargaining” to ensure that her baby remains safe through her pregnancy in Chapter 8. This moment also reinforces the idea that South Korean society is deeply superstitious as discussed by Miho in Chapter 4. Specifically, here Ara makes clear that women must constantly safeguard against the worst-case scenario, as assuming any kind of happiness begs for inevitable disappointment.
In the final chapter of the novel, Kyuri remembers her experience seeing a fortune teller prior to her cosmetic surgeries. The fortune teller informed her that she would have no luck with love, then stating that Kyuri had the same saju—referring to the four pillars of destiny that depict a person’s fate within Korean culture—as a general who ran into battle knowing he had nothing to lose. Kyuri states that “It is easy to leap when you have no choice” (260), mirroring that concept within her own life. This quote, however, can be interpreted as relating to each of the other protagonists in the novel as well. It can be seen in Ara’s parasocial relationship with Taein, Sujin’s intense desire for cosmetic surgery, Wonna’s marriage to her husband, and Miho’s choice to date Hanbin after Ruby’s death. Each character makes choices in their lives unsure of the consequences and simply because they don’t believe they have another option.
At the end of the novel, all of the protagonists are seen together for the first time. They decide to walk upstairs together to share a late-night meal. The novel ends with the line, “So we all stand up to make our way upstairs together, as the sky starts crackling, taking aim at each of us and the drunk men stumbling by” (268), which highlights the bond that has finally formed between the women; it marks one of the only moments of complete solidarity between women in the novel. The line creates a new distinction between “us” and the “drunk men,” successfully turning the men into the Other for the first time.
