The Eyes are the best part

by Monica Kim book review

Follow us on Insta!!

***Spoiler Warnings***

Duh…

The Eyes Are The Best Part is a 2024 novel by American author Monica Kim. The Novel is narrated in the first person by Ji-Won, who is a college student and the daughter of Korean immigrants. The novel’s focus is on Ji-won’s psychological decline as she attends college following her father’s abandonment of her family; this then allows the novel to explore such themes like gender expectations, the performance of femineity, consumption is power and fetishising cultures that are not your won.

Ji-won is a teenage girl and college freshman living with her mother, Umma, and younger sister, Ji-hyun, in Los Angeles. At the novel’s outset, Umma eats a fish’s eye, declaring it the best part of the meal, which disgusts her daughters. The family is still reeling from their abandonment by the girls’ father, Appa. began eating fisheyes, which she claims bring luck. The eyes of the fish are a foretelling of Ji-won’s future consumption of human eyes to gain control in her life. Ji-won discovers the true reason for her father’s departure; he left the family for another woman. After some time, Umma starts dating George, a white man she meets at her job at a Korean grocery store. Before this, Umma shared her views on dating, citing an article claiming white men make better partners than Korean men. When her daughters challenged these generalizations, Umma expressed regret about not having married a white man instead of their father. The daughters’ first meeting with George revealing his troubling behaviour. He struggles with pronouncing the daughters’ names correctly and insists on using their initials. During dinner, he openly ogles the server (who is of Asian ancestry), controls the ordering, and blatantly displays his wealth through a wallet filled with $100 bills. After dinner, he forces Umma to sit on a wet bench and laughs at her discomfort; additionally, he inappropriately stares at Ji-won’s chest. George is someone who fetishises women from the east and sees them more as a decoration then as humans of the same worth. This can be seen then he calls them oriental, to which Ji-won points out that her mother, her siter and herself are not some fancy Asian rug.

Ji-won’s life in college is complicated by her relationship with Geoffrey, a classmate who displays possessive behaviour, particularly regarding her friendship with a student named Alexis, which develops romantic overtones but never progresses into an outright queer relationship. Meanwhile, George’s presence in their home starts to become intolerable, with him staying overnight and making both daughters uncomfortable with his predatory stares. Ji-won develops an obsession with blue eyes, particularly focusing on George’s eyes. The blue eyes, a symbol of white genetics, haunt Ji-won’s dreams as her desire to consume human eyes grow. When she comes across the body of an unhoused man, she cuts his eyes out of his skull and eats them, feeling a deep pleasure at consuming them. Eating blue eyes becomes an obsession, and Ji-won goes on to murder two men near her college campus, consuming their eyes each time. Simultaneously, she works to sabotage George’s life after discovering his relationship with a woman named Jen. She destroys his work presentation, replacing it with compromising photos, and systematically undermines his relationship with Umma. Whilst Geoffrey’s behaviour also becomes increasingly concerning. He stalks Ji-won and eventually steals her backpack, which contains evidence of her murders. Ultimately, Ji-won attempts to murder George by drugging him with crushed Ambien, but he awakens and attacks her. Geoffrey, who has followed her, misses the beginning of the interaction but intervenes by striking George repeatedly with a rock. Ji-won is hospitalized following this, where doctors discover and remove a brain tumour.

During her hospital stay, Ji-won learns that her father is expecting a male baby with his new partner. Despite the tumour’s removal, her homicidal tendencies persist. She murders George in his hospital room by poisoning him with crushed oxycodone and then consumes his eyes. She manipulates events to frame Geoffrey, knowing the previous murder weapon is at his apartment, providing false evidence of his participation in Ji-won’s previous murders. The novel concludes with Umma mourning George’s death despite everything that occurred. Ji-won feels protective of her mother and sister while planning to violently confront her father, whom she considers ultimately responsible for their family’s troubles. Ji-won is opposing the ideals of the obedient “good” Asian girl and acting to literally devour the male oppressors in her life.

The novel was a fascinating read, even if at times is did gag when I had to read the description of the eye eating scenes. It kept me engaged the whole time and I did laugh a few times which seems unusual to say about a book that goes into detail on how a woman wants to eat men’s eyes- but it did!

Overall I give this book 4/5.