By Ava Shaffer
Glossier meets gothic satire in Mona Awad’s Rouge. Taking place after her mother’s unexpected death, Belle, a skincare addict, returns to California and is met with the most beautiful and deadly of circumstances. Through the discovery of a spa unlike any other, Belle begins to unravel the secrets behind her mother's longtime beauty and youthfulness. Overflowing with glow, obsession, grief, envy– and of course beauty– this psychological thriller will leave you eyeing your skincare and makeup products warily for weeks to come.
“Didn't you envy? Didn't you want? A mirror is only a mirror, Belle. It only ever reflects back what we desire and long for”
Read This Book If You…
Watched American Horror Story way too young
Want to never see Tom Cruise the same way ever again
Are interested in modern gothic tales
Appreciate beautiful prose and character interiority
Would like to read a mother-daughter relationship that is truly eerie
Oh wow. This book! It started off slow for me but as soon as I got into it, I couldn’t put it down. I burned through 300 pages in one day, staying up until 1am to finish it which was admittedly a poor choice for a scaredy-cat like me. But I had to know what would happen! I was thinking about this book whenever I wasn’t actively reading it, and I know I’ll be thinking about it long after I’ve finished it now too.
I also loved this article with Margaret Atwood and Mona Awad, and the nod Awad paid to her in the acknowledgements section. Oh to have your palm read by Margaret Atwood, that’s the dream.
The amount of trust I have in Mona Awad as a writer could fill all the red bottles that line the walls of the skincare addict’s bedroom that we follow in this story. I went into this book knowing I’d like it because Bunny was one of my favorite books ever, and also because the content (or makeup ;) ) of this story has always fascinated me. Skincare, beauty, makeup, and how women are raised to interact with it is such an overlooked topic that can really run deep into stories of identity, obsession, desire, jealousy, and womanhood. These themes in the hands of Mona Awad was exactly what I was hoping for.
“If she did ask, I would say it was grief. The deepest grief. I know she would accept that as an answer. No one knows what’s inside grief. Anything at all can be there.”
Awad is incredibly talented at writing an unraveling– when the world turns upside down for our main character and we follow their descent into madness. This narrative especially impressed me in Rouge, although it did a wonderful job in Bunny as well, because we spend the entire book in Belle’s twisted mind. We watch her process grief, reflect on her childhood memories, and enter this bizarre skincare cult all while her sanity slips away at the edges. The prose in this is absolutely gorgeous and unrelenting, her cadence one of my favorite parts especially. I’d describe this reading experience as cinematic, there were so many scenes that I could picture so vividly.
For most of this book, I had no idea what was going on, but I had faith in Awad’s storytelling and the ending was so rewarding because of that. I love how she makes the reader work for it to figure out what is actually happening and being said in the story. It’s like she has the same faith in her readers as they have in her as a writer.
The mother-daughter relationship in this was also phenomenal. It was so complex, layered, and at times downright eerie, and yet sharply indicative of real relationships. She framed the mother as this almost mythic figure, and both her and the daughter being overwhelmed with love, envy, and insecurities made this such an intricate relationship to depict.
Rouge was a fast-paced, exciting gothic tale with shocking reveals, yes, but it also had a steady beating heart throughout it. This had so many interesting things to say about the beauty industry, especially the way it corrodes identity, fosters competition, and prays on insecurities. This also said astute things about the whiteness inherent in Western beauty standards and the denial of beauty treatments in the public eye. In this novel, Awad paints beauty as something secret, something sinister, something you cannot take your eyes away from.
“ ‘The only journey that matters in the end, Daughter of Noelle.’ ‘Retinol?’ I whisper. ‘The soul. A journey of the soul, of course.’”
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