The Scare Salon

In my opinion, this book deserved all the accolades and then some; it’s a very strong debut, with a complex main protagonist who you easily relate to even though she’s slowly turning into a psycho, and a plot that touches on deeper issues like misogyny, the sexual fetishization of other races, and the cultural expectations that emerge from growing up in the US as the eldest child of immigrant parents.

Eighteen-year-old Ji-won is Korean-American. She’s in her first year of college and living in a small apartment in Los Angeles with her fifteen-year-old sister Ji-hyun and their mother, who is always called Umma. At the beginning of the story, their beloved father leaves them, having met another woman. Umma is completely distraught, vacillating between suicidal depression and a blindly optimistic hope that he will realize the error of his ways and come back to his family.

In one of her hopeful moods, Umma tells the girls at dinner that eating fish eyes is supposed to bring good luck, and she chomps a couple down with great relish, seemingly believing that this will make her husband return. Ji-hyun is completely revolted, and Ji-won is too, at least initially. But she’s also kind of intrigued by the idea.

A bit later, Umma tells her daughters that she read an article saying that according to some random woman who dated dozens of men of different races, Korean men are the worst for dating and white men the best. Ji-won rightfully points out that the chick who wrote the article dated a grand total of one Korean man who happened to suck, and you can’t disparage a whole race of people based on one asshole, but Umma is convinced that she needs to date a white guy, and urges her daughters to stay away from Korean men too because they’re all terrible. This is clearly a reaction to being abandoned by her philandering husband, who was also a Korean man.

Not long after this discussion, Umma announces that she met a white guy named George and has started dating him; he was a customer at the Korean grocery store where she works. The girls are wary of how quickly this is all occurring, and when Umma suggests that they all go out to dinner so they can meet him, they’re pretty reluctant but go ahead with it anyway since they know what a hard time their mother has been having since their dad left.

Well, turns out George is a gross, obnoxious pig who I immediately wanted to punch in the dick. He brags about how he can speak Korean because he was stationed there in the military, but his Korean is so bad that the girls can barely understand what he’s saying. He takes them to a mediocre Chinese restaurant that he claims is the best and most authentic ever, and very openly ogles the Asian waitress so much that she sends another server out because she’s so uncomfortable. This incident makes George have something of a tantrum, calling what he previously deemed the best Chinese retaurant ever as suddenly the worst because that server didn’t want to deal with his creepy ass.

So yeah, in case you hadn’t noticed, George has a raging case of yellow fever, and not only does he leer at every Asian woman in his eyeline even with his supposed girlfriend right next to him, he also shamelessly lusts after Ji-won and Ji-hyun (who, if you’ll remember, is only fifteen). Both girls are understandably repulsed by him, but their mother is pathetically devoted and won’t see his flaws no matter how many times Ji-won tries to reason with her.

Worse yet, George claims his apartment flooded, and he has to stay with Umma and the girls while repairs are being made. To no one’s surprise, he’s a complete bum once he’s moved in, letting Umma wait on him hand and foot while he just lays around on the couch making demands and staring at the teenagers’ tits. Ji-won also begins to suspect that he’s fooling around on her mom.

George’s only redeeming features, in fact, are his intense, beautiful blue eyes, and as Ji-won’s hatred for him festers, she becomes ever more obsessed with those eyes, having weird dreams involving them popping out all over the walls and stuff like that.

While all this nonsense is going on at home, Ji-won is also struggling with her workload at school. She’s never been one to make friends easily, but she starts hanging out with a white guy named Geoffrey in one of her classes, who she initially likes a lot. Because of his ridiculously performative feminism—he spouts philosophical rants about the patriarchy and has a Ruth Bader Ginsberg T-shirt, for crying out loud—you just know that he’s gonna turn out to be a fuckin’ douchebag too, even though he genuinely seems like a good dude at first. But when Ji-won befriends a black girl named Alexis (who it’s implied she might be developing romantic feelings for), Geoffrey gets jealous, and his true colors start to come out.

As the story goes on, we’re following Ji-won’s perspective as she begins spiraling into hallucinatory madness and obsession, mainly fantasizing about killing George and eating his delicious eyes. We also discover some minor details about Ji-won’s past behavior that just barely hint at the monstrous nature that’s now coming to the fore.

The thing about Ji-won’s character, though, is that she’s so sympathetic and her point of view so well delineated that even though you’re not necessarily condoning what she’s doing, you can at least understand it. And although she does end up hurting and killing innocent people, when she starts psychologically fucking with George in the lead-up to her plan to off him, you’re low-key rooting for her because George is such a massive cocksocket and honestly kinda has it coming.

The first half (or so) of the novel is almost all character development and build-up, with clear indications that Ji-won’s mental state is crumbling, but once she goes full-on crazy, it’s off to the races and gets pretty gruesome, especially if you’re squicked out by eyeballs and thinking about how it would feel to scoop one out of someone’s head and chow down on it (an event which is described multiple times in vivid, disgusting detail).

The Eyes Are The Best Part is a great, fast-paced ride, and it went in directions I didn’t expect toward the end. Additionally, because we’re seeing everything from Ji-won’s perspective, she seems like a living, breathing person and we can relate to her, even as she’s doing absolutely bonkers shit. The story also has something of a subtle dark humor to it, which I was totally on board with. In short, I had a fantastic time with this book, reading it straight through in one sitting because I just couldn’t wait to see what happened next. It’s a fun, fucked up horror story with some fascinating, deeper layers, and I’m eager to see what Monika Kim comes up with next.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.