Mona Awad

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.

A Novel

Rouge

Amelia

No one knows what’s inside grief. Anything at all can be there.

𝑂𝑑𝑖𝑙𝑒

I'm wearing a dread of liquid gold that burns like the sun. Im wearing shoes of reddest blood. The mirrors are cracking all arond me.

Why didit change? is a question all over his face. A handsome face, I can't help but notice. Tan, angular, sharp. Very well hydrated. His brimmed hat and his suit remind me of old movies. The sort Mother liked us to watch together, mostly French New Wave and Hollywood noirs. A certain kind of man in those movies she loved. Mysteriously broken. Beautiful, but something off. Forever moving to a minor key. Always in the process of lighting a cigarette. Always half smiling through the smoke, sort of like this man is now. 

Rouge quotes

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