Female Rage: The Novel, The Eyes Are the Best Part is a ferociously told, surrealist story centering around the female experience of a Korean-American collage student. As an Asian first-gen immigrant myself, I greatly resonated with Monika Kim's depiction of the breakdown of a nuclear family in a foreign land, as well as various forms of racism in America.

Even though it is marketed primarily as horror, the first half of the novel reads more like a brutally candid character study with a dash of the macabre. I've seen The Eyes Are the Best Part's marketing material mentioning Michelle Zauner's Crying in H-Mart, and that is actually a very spot-on reference point for this portion of the narrative. The horror and violence does amp up drastically in its later half, offering numerous instances of nightmare-inducing visual (I will not be seeing eyeball the same way after this).

The one critique I have is regarding its conclusion, which feels a bit like the author simply ran out of steam — various plot details are explained away in quick succession with great amount of convenience, and I would've preferred to have what was suggested in its open-endedness actually depicted on page.

Despite the slight premature ending, as a whole The Eyes Are the Best Part hits home emotionally, I sympathize with the rage and pain of its female protagonist, and they are expressed with blood-dripping style and gusto. Maeve Fly by CJ Leede comes to mind as a comparable (but also vastly different) reading experience.