Genre Fiction
![Mona Awad - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B01BTCATDU.jpg)
Rouge: A Novel
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Bustle, The Millions, LitHub, TOR, Good Housekeeping, Our Culture Mag, and more!
From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother's unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother's fate-and find a connection that is more than skin deep?
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother's considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother's demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother's) obsession with the mirror-and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.
Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry-as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.
From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother's unexpected death sends her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her mother's fate-and find a connection that is more than skin deep?
For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother's considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother's demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother's) obsession with the mirror-and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.
Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry-as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.
Editorial Reviews
"Mona Awad's seductive fourth novel looks at the complicated relationships between mothers, daughters, and their mirrors....[a] surreal gothic tale."
--TIME, 36 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2023
"An edgy fable on the perils of our modern fascination with beauty."
--Vogue
"Billed as Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut, this sinister modern fairy tale from author Mona Awad (Bunny) introduces readers to the uncommonly creepy beauty spa known as La Maison de Méduse. Look for black humor, demonic aggression, and some uncomfortably detailed commentary on the essential cult-iness of the modern beauty industry."
--Goodreads, 55 Most Anticipated Books of Fall
"Awad's latest is a dreamy (or perhaps nightmarish) gothic fairy tale about a mother, a daughter, and their shared obsession with their own beauty. Like all of Awad's novels, it reels you in, shakes your brain until you're not sure what you're seeing, and then floats off cackling on a cloud of smoke. Metaphorically, that is. I'd forgive you for not being sure."
-Lit Hub (Most Anticipated Books of 2023)
"Surreal, archetypal, and totally hypnotic."
-Bustle, The 35 Best New Books of Fall 2023
"Mona Awad, I will read everything you ever write. She is a writer of unbelievable talent."
-Tor.com
"[A] hypnotic tour de force… Awad approaches the increasingly well-trod ground of sinister wellness gurus with aplomb, creating an atmosphere of creeping discomfort and surreality right from the start. This is the stuff of fairy tales-red shoes, ballrooms, mirrors, and thorns but also sincerity, poignancy, and terror."
-Kirkus (Starred Review)
"[A] delightfully twisted fairy tale… The author's acerbic wit radiates in this excoriating story of beauty's ugly side."
-Publisher's Weekly
"At a time in history when beauty routines drain souls and time, Mona Awad has fashioned a smart, page-turning mystery about a young woman besotted by all things skincare. In elegant prose, Rouge digs through the tormented love that can both bind and estrange a mother and her daughter, and a body from a deeper self. Awad is one of...
--TIME, 36 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2023
"An edgy fable on the perils of our modern fascination with beauty."
--Vogue
"Billed as Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut, this sinister modern fairy tale from author Mona Awad (Bunny) introduces readers to the uncommonly creepy beauty spa known as La Maison de Méduse. Look for black humor, demonic aggression, and some uncomfortably detailed commentary on the essential cult-iness of the modern beauty industry."
--Goodreads, 55 Most Anticipated Books of Fall
"Awad's latest is a dreamy (or perhaps nightmarish) gothic fairy tale about a mother, a daughter, and their shared obsession with their own beauty. Like all of Awad's novels, it reels you in, shakes your brain until you're not sure what you're seeing, and then floats off cackling on a cloud of smoke. Metaphorically, that is. I'd forgive you for not being sure."
-Lit Hub (Most Anticipated Books of 2023)
"Surreal, archetypal, and totally hypnotic."
-Bustle, The 35 Best New Books of Fall 2023
"Mona Awad, I will read everything you ever write. She is a writer of unbelievable talent."
-Tor.com
"[A] hypnotic tour de force… Awad approaches the increasingly well-trod ground of sinister wellness gurus with aplomb, creating an atmosphere of creeping discomfort and surreality right from the start. This is the stuff of fairy tales-red shoes, ballrooms, mirrors, and thorns but also sincerity, poignancy, and terror."
-Kirkus (Starred Review)
"[A] delightfully twisted fairy tale… The author's acerbic wit radiates in this excoriating story of beauty's ugly side."
-Publisher's Weekly
"At a time in history when beauty routines drain souls and time, Mona Awad has fashioned a smart, page-turning mystery about a young woman besotted by all things skincare. In elegant prose, Rouge digs through the tormented love that can both bind and estrange a mother and her daughter, and a body from a deeper self. Awad is one of...
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1 1
2016
La Jolla, California
After the funeral. I'm hiding in Mother's bathroom watching a skincare video about necks. Cheap black dress that chafes. Illicit cigarette. Sitting on the toilet amid her decorative baskets, her red jellyfish soaps, her black towel sets. Smoke comes tumbling out of my mouth in amorphous gray clouds. I blow it out the window where the palm trees still sway and the alien sun still shines and the sky is a blue that hurts my eyes. There's a Kleenex box made entirely of jagged seashells at my back-probably she never once filled it with Kleenex. There's her mirror over the sink, a crack running right down the middle of the glass. Whenever I look at myself in that mirror, I look broken. Cleaved. There's the perfume she wore every day of her life on the marble counter, the Chanel Rouge Allure lipstick in its gold-and-black case. A little cluster of red jars and vials on a silver tray. For the face, dear. For the face, I can hear Mother saying to me. Need all the help we can get, am I right? Cynical smile of the beautiful who know they're on the downhill slope.
Yes, Mother, I'd say. But not you. You don't need any help at all.
I don't look closely at any of it.
Instead I stare at my phone, where the skin video plays. My eyes are dry and they are focused. Focused on Dr. Marva, who is telling me in her reassuring English accent all about my poor, poor neck. The video is actually called "How to Save Your Own Neck." I've watched it before. It's one of my favorites.
Dr. Marva's soft yet firm words fill my mother's bathroom.
"We don't take care of our necks," Dr. Marva is saying sadly. And she looks quite sad in her white silk blouse. As if she is grieving for us and our poor necks. "They often get neglected, don't they?"
She looks right at me with her golden eyes. I find myself nodding as I always do.
"Yes, Marva," I whisper along. Yes, they do get neglected.
"Which is quite a tragedy," Marva observes. "Because the skin there is already so thin."
Didn't Mother always tell me this? The neck never lies, Belle. The neck is truthful, deeply cruel. Like a mirror of the soul. It reveals all, you see? And she'd point at her own throat. I'd look at Mother's throat and see nothing. Just an expanse of whiteness shot through with blue veins.
I see, Mother, I always said.
On my phone screen, Marva shakes her head as if this truth about necks is one she cannot bear to speak. "What atrocities," she whispers, stroking her own neck, "might bloom here? Redness, of course," she intones. "A brown pigment, perhaps. Thinning, atrophied patches. Essentially," she adds with a laugh, "a triumvirate of horror."
As Marva says this, she tilts her head back to reveal an impossibly smooth white column of flesh. Untainted, unmarred. She strokes the skin softly with her red-nailed hands.
As I watch her do this, I begin to stroke my own neck. I can't help it.
A flash of Mother's throat appears again in my mind's eye. Smooth and pale just like Marva's. Always some pendant to show off the hollows. Then toward the end, this sudden fondness for jewel-toned glass, stones cut in the strangest shapes. An obsidian dagger. A warped, dark red heart. The way she'd clutch that heart with her fingers. Look at me on video calls like she was lost and my face was a dark forest, a mirror in which she barely recognized herself.
Dread fills my stomach now as I stroke my own neck. Not at the memory of Mother, I'm ashamed to say. But because I feel the skin tags, the unsightly bands here and here and here.
"Your poor, poor neck," Marva whispers, shaking her head again as if she can actually see me. "It could really use some tightening and brightening, couldn't it?"
Yes, Marva. It really could.
Knock, knock.
Sylvia. I can feel it. Her little knuckles rapping on the door. Then the saccharine tone I hear in my teeth roots. "Mirabelle?" she says. "Mira, are you in there?"
Terrible to hear my name spoken by that voice. I think of Mother's voice. Rich, deep, accented with French. I was only ever Mirabelle when she was angry. She never once dignified Mira, though it's what I mostly go by these days. Belle, she always ca...
2016
La Jolla, California
After the funeral. I'm hiding in Mother's bathroom watching a skincare video about necks. Cheap black dress that chafes. Illicit cigarette. Sitting on the toilet amid her decorative baskets, her red jellyfish soaps, her black towel sets. Smoke comes tumbling out of my mouth in amorphous gray clouds. I blow it out the window where the palm trees still sway and the alien sun still shines and the sky is a blue that hurts my eyes. There's a Kleenex box made entirely of jagged seashells at my back-probably she never once filled it with Kleenex. There's her mirror over the sink, a crack running right down the middle of the glass. Whenever I look at myself in that mirror, I look broken. Cleaved. There's the perfume she wore every day of her life on the marble counter, the Chanel Rouge Allure lipstick in its gold-and-black case. A little cluster of red jars and vials on a silver tray. For the face, dear. For the face, I can hear Mother saying to me. Need all the help we can get, am I right? Cynical smile of the beautiful who know they're on the downhill slope.
Yes, Mother, I'd say. But not you. You don't need any help at all.
I don't look closely at any of it.
Instead I stare at my phone, where the skin video plays. My eyes are dry and they are focused. Focused on Dr. Marva, who is telling me in her reassuring English accent all about my poor, poor neck. The video is actually called "How to Save Your Own Neck." I've watched it before. It's one of my favorites.
Dr. Marva's soft yet firm words fill my mother's bathroom.
"We don't take care of our necks," Dr. Marva is saying sadly. And she looks quite sad in her white silk blouse. As if she is grieving for us and our poor necks. "They often get neglected, don't they?"
She looks right at me with her golden eyes. I find myself nodding as I always do.
"Yes, Marva," I whisper along. Yes, they do get neglected.
"Which is quite a tragedy," Marva observes. "Because the skin there is already so thin."
Didn't Mother always tell me this? The neck never lies, Belle. The neck is truthful, deeply cruel. Like a mirror of the soul. It reveals all, you see? And she'd point at her own throat. I'd look at Mother's throat and see nothing. Just an expanse of whiteness shot through with blue veins.
I see, Mother, I always said.
On my phone screen, Marva shakes her head as if this truth about necks is one she cannot bear to speak. "What atrocities," she whispers, stroking her own neck, "might bloom here? Redness, of course," she intones. "A brown pigment, perhaps. Thinning, atrophied patches. Essentially," she adds with a laugh, "a triumvirate of horror."
As Marva says this, she tilts her head back to reveal an impossibly smooth white column of flesh. Untainted, unmarred. She strokes the skin softly with her red-nailed hands.
As I watch her do this, I begin to stroke my own neck. I can't help it.
A flash of Mother's throat appears again in my mind's eye. Smooth and pale just like Marva's. Always some pendant to show off the hollows. Then toward the end, this sudden fondness for jewel-toned glass, stones cut in the strangest shapes. An obsidian dagger. A warped, dark red heart. The way she'd clutch that heart with her fingers. Look at me on video calls like she was lost and my face was a dark forest, a mirror in which she barely recognized herself.
Dread fills my stomach now as I stroke my own neck. Not at the memory of Mother, I'm ashamed to say. But because I feel the skin tags, the unsightly bands here and here and here.
"Your poor, poor neck," Marva whispers, shaking her head again as if she can actually see me. "It could really use some tightening and brightening, couldn't it?"
Yes, Marva. It really could.
Knock, knock.
Sylvia. I can feel it. Her little knuckles rapping on the door. Then the saccharine tone I hear in my teeth roots. "Mirabelle?" she says. "Mira, are you in there?"
Terrible to hear my name spoken by that voice. I think of Mother's voice. Rich, deep, accented with French. I was only ever Mirabelle when she was angry. She never once dignified Mira, though it's what I mostly go by these days. Belle, she always ca...
