Rouge
A Novel
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3.7 • 41 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A National Bestseller
A USA TODAY Bestseller
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
A Goodreads Choice Award Finalist
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Electric Literature, Tor, and Literary Hub
From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a “Grimm Brothers fairy tale for the modern age” (Good Housekeeping) and “darkly funny horror novel” (NYLON) about a lonely young woman who’s drawn to a cult-like spa in the wake of her mother’s mysterious death. “Surreal, scary and deeply moving—like all the best fairy tales” (People).
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 by Time, Vogue, The Guardian, Goodreads, Bustle, The Millions, LitHub, Tor, Good Housekeeping, and more!
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Awad (Bunny) satirizes anti-aging beauty regimens in this delightfully twisted fairy tale. Now a dress salesperson in Montreal, 38-year-old Belle spent her teen years in Southern California observing her mother Noelle's meticulous skin-care routines. Belle sought to replicate those routines, despite Noelle's assurance that she would never need them because of her Egyptian complexion, inherited from her father. Mother and daughter have long grown distant from each other when Noelle dies from a fall off a cliff near her home. Arriving in San Diego for the funeral, Belle learns Noelle had racked up thousands of dollars in debt and gained a mysterious group of friends in her obsessive pursuit of smooth skin. One night, Belle winds up at a party at Rouge, Noelle's favorite spa. The dazzling hosts instantly recognize her as their late client's daughter, and tell her that she's the perfect candidate for their mysterious treatment ("Self-care is really our only escape from the Abyss," one of them says). Though the narrative stretches on a bit too long, Awad invents increasingly warped skin-care routines as Belle falls under Rouge's spell: her face is electrified, her memories are manipulated, and she stares at a jellyfish in a tank. The author's acerbic wit radiates in this excoriating story of beauty's ugly side.
