The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monica Kim
Ji-won’s world is falling apart. The Korean American college freshman won a scholarship for her grades in high school, but now her academic marks – and everything else in her life – are in freefall. The father she once admired has abandoned her family, abruptly leaving her mom for a younger woman.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, her mom gets involved with an insufferable White man who has a fetish for Asian girls. Meanwhile, Ji-won has become estranged from her high school friends. She has yet to make any new pals at university.
Not surprisingly, Ji-won’s mental health suffers a severe decline. She becomes fascinated with eyeballs – particularly blue ones, which she considers the most beautiful. She can’t stop thinking about eyes, and she’ll do anything to get them.
First of all, the cover for this book is really something, isn’t it? That really stands out on the bookshelf! This is an example of an effectively polarizing cover. It will instantly turn off and disgust many people, but it’s also enticing and intriguing for the novel’s target audience. My initial reaction was instant interest in reading the book!
Societal Issues examined through an unusual angle
The Eyes are the Best Part has two well-drawn and realistic villains. The first is George, the mom’s new boyfriend. He is blatantly racist and misogynistic. Ji-won’s mom, who is desperate for a bounce back relationship, ignores this. She insists that her new beaux is a wonderful guy.
George’s true nature is quickly apparent to Ji-won and her younger sister, 15 year old Ji-hyun. Ji-won uncovers evidence that George is already involved in a relationship, and is using her mom for nefarious purposes.
George also blatantly ogles teenage Ji-hyun. Ji-won overhears him referring to her sister as a “little slut.” She starts a campaign of psychological warfare to drive George insane and out of their lives.
The second main antagonist is Geoffrey, a college student who tries to befriend Ji-won. Geoffrey tries to impress girls by spewing pseudointellectual feminist psychobabble that he neither believes nor understands. He’s the type of guy who’s desperate to seem smart and cool, but is really just a needy, emotionally disturbed incel stalker.
It’s obvious that Geoffrey wants to get in Ji-won’s pants, but she is incredibly naive about this. It’s odd how she can see right through George, but not Geoffrey.
Ji-won does manage to make one quality new friend. Alexis is a bright and caring student who warns her about Geoffrey’s true intentions. Ji-won spends a great deal of time telling us about how beautiful Alexis is. As with her naivete about Geoffrey, Ji-won seems to lack awareness that she’s sexually attracted to Alexis (or to girls in general).
She describes Alexis’s body in such glowing terms that her words becoming borderline fetishistic. Is Ji-won hypocritical for fetishizing Alexis, who is Black? Her criticism about George’s behavior are valid, but she should also learn to be more self aware.
Eyeballs, Eyeballs, Everywhere!
Ji-won’s fascination with eyeballs grows into an irresistible obsession. People disappear around town. The police find corpses with their eyeballs missing. Gee, who could be responsible for these grotesque acts?
The Eyes are the Best Part is not for you if you want to read something with lots of likeable characters. The only sympathetic people are Alexis and Ji-hyun. Everyone else is an idiot, a horrible person, or both.
The novel concludes with a wild and improbable sequence set at a hospital. To me, this is the weakest part of the book. Ji-won transforms into a criminal mastermind and savvy manipulator. She hatches a genius plan to destroy all her enemies and concludes her story in an abrupt and tidy way that is neither satisfying nor convincing.
Ji-won is sometimes an unreliable narrator, so perhaps she’s not telling us the full truth about what happens at the end. That’s the closest I can come to justifying how this story concludes.
This is Monica Kim’s first novel. The writing is solid, except that she uses too many adverbs. Kim is effective with characterization and the dialogue generally feels genuine. Along with writing believable villains, Kim also interjects some anecdotes from Ji-won’s past to convey the challenges that Korean immigrants face in the United States, such as racism and the language barrier.
One particular story that struck me was Ji-won’s rage as she remembers her father, who ran a dry cleaning business when she was a kid, being humiliated by a White customer who demanded a refund for something that wasn’t her dad’s fault.
I wish she had found a better way to conclude the story. The ending is too quick and easy. The final scene leaves open the possibility for a sequel, so maybe there will be further eyeball snatching adventures.
Rating
The Eyes are the Best Part is an innovative novel with salient observations about racism and misogyny in the modern United States. It needed a better ending to truly reach greatness.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 7.5
