Reviews with content warning for Grief - Rouge

As expected, this was a very strange read. However, Awad's writing is so weird and haunting and effective that it absolutely carried my attention through the entire bizarre plot. Do I fully understand what I just read? Not at all. But I've accepted that Awad's books are all about the weird, creepy, ambiguous journey and less about the destination. I found this one to be a bit too repetitive at times, which made it less hard hitting for me than Bunny, but still a good read. The fact that there's a Tom Cruise facsimile at the heart of a skincare cult situation is also just *chef's kiss* perfection.

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ripxreads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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mmccombs's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious reflective slow-paced

3.5

This was quite weird and unexpected, even for a Mona Awad book! I didn’t know anything going in to this, so to say this was a Journey may be an understatement. It’s a fever dream of a fairy tale and a grief-induced fugue state that analyzes a brutal mother-daughter relationship and the beauty industry, there was just a lot going on. And it was also way too long, there were multiple parts where I felt like I had already read a section almost exactly like it before, so I think it could have been paired down in the middle. The ending was satisfying and I came away from it feeling lots of feelings about how much we are forced to focus on beauty, on never aging, on “whitening and brightening,” on comparing ourselves to our mothers or our daughters and never quite feeling like you’re enough. Really interesting topics covered in this book, it’ll leave you feeling a bit disoriented (and feeling a bit weird[er] about Tom Cruise).

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majamatcha's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“Just sick, I tell myself. But no, not just sick. I know the word I feel. The one Mother taught me from Snow White that is so many bad feelings at once. That I feel when I watch Tom Cruise with any girl, when I watch Mother put on her hat with the wide brim to protect her pale face. The dark, twisting poison one that aches and eats and empties. And wants. All by itself.”

TITLE—Rouge

AUTHOR—Mona Awad

PUBLISHED—2023

PUBLISHER—Marysue Rucci Books (Simon & Schuster)

GENRE—literary speculative horror fiction

SETTING—mostly in San Diego, California with some flashbacks to Montreal, Quebec

MAIN THEMES/SUBJECTS—mirrors, fairy tales (Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, & others), surface-level beauty, expensive skin care products, vanity, obsession with youth & immortality, the ocean, darkness & shadows, grief, dress shops & retail saleswork, mother-daughter relationship, roses, jellyfish, souls, word slips, secrets, a beauty cult, unreliable narrator, occult beauty practices, memory & disassociation, colorism, envy, inherited trauma & guilt, forgiveness, acceptance & redemption

WRITING STYLE—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

CHARACTERS—🌕🌕🌕🌗🌚

STORY/PLOT—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

BONUS ELEMENT/S—the interweaving of all the fairy tale themes and motifs was 😚👌🏻

PHILOSOPHY—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌗

PREMISE—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

EXECUTION—🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

“I had seven different kinds of acid on rotation, each one for what Marva called a different ‘skin predicament’. I had the Universal Brightening Peel Pads and the Overnight Glycolic Resurfacing Matrix and of course, the triple-exfoliating Lotion Magique, a cult French elixir that's still illegal in some countries—the one with the banned ingredient that reeks of sulfur and numbs your face. I also had the infamous blood-colored Eradikating Ambrosia, which smells like turpentine and looks like fresh goat placenta. Each night I rub one or more on my face with a cotton pad, and my skin screams beautifully. Goes an unholy red. I watch it burn in the mirror while an animal scent, a smell of sacrifice, fills the bathroom like smoke.”

Summary:

“With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cultlike nature of the beauty industry as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze.”

My thoughts:

Unique, and unhinged, unsettling and utterly bold, Awad’s story of beauty and secrets, grief and obsession sucked me in like a rip tide. With less than 40 pages left in the book I thought no *way* could this story have anything close to a satisfying ending. The chaos and disorientation, the weirdness and seeming total disintegration of the MC’s entire world and agency seemed so far gone that I just could not see a way that Awad could bring it all back together. Whew was I wrong!

I could definitely see this book not being for everyone as it really pushes the boundaries of speculative literary fiction but I loved it. It definitely even had some Helen Oyeyemi vibes going on a little (reminded me some of BOY, SNOW, BIRD in fact at times). Easily a top read of the year for me.

“Well, Beauty can be scary sometimes, it can take your breath away.”

I would recommend this book to readers who can handle some seriously intense speculative horror and bizarre plot arc developments. This is a big “trust the author” type read. 😅 This book is best read seaside.

Final note: It’s definitely not weird that the MC’s name was the name I used in my highschool French class and I’ve never come across it anywhere else before, right? Like on top of my relating *a lot* to the MC for other deeply personal, uncomfortable reasons? 🤪🫠😅

“‘Red like roses. Red like blood. Red like the algae she steals from the Deep to make her look young and beautiful forever. But it won't save her in the end.’ ‘It won’t? Why not?’ ‘Nothing saves us in the end,’ Tom said, stroking my hair. ‘Not gods or shadow gods. Not heaven or the endless Deep. Not blood or cream red as blood. Rouge, as they say.’”

🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕

Season: Summer

CW // grief, suicide, death of a parent, grooming, colorism, body horror (Please feel free to DM me for more specifics!)

Further Reading—

BUNNY by Mona Awad—TBR
BOY, SNOW, BIRD by Helen Oyeyemi
HOW TO BE EATEN by Maria Adelmann
MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION by Ottessa Moshfegh
THE SEED COLLECTORS by Scarlett Thomas
MIRROR, MIRROR by Gregory Maguire
A MIRROR MENDED by Alix Harrow

Content Warnings

danidamico's review against another edition

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dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes

4.5

Ya pasaron varios días desde que termine esta novela, pero me cuesta organizar mis pensamientos y ponerlos en palabras. Es un libro imperfecto, sin embargo, me conmovió y eso vale mucho. Rouge es la historia de Mirabelle, una mujer que vuelve a California para el funeral de su madre, Noelle, que ha muerto repentinamente de forma extraña. Este viaje la obligará a enfrentarse a recuerdos reprimidos, traumas de su infancia, la relación difícil que tenía con Noelle y una secta que le promete alcanzar la versión más magnífica de sí misma. Mona Awad se inspiró en su propia adicción a los cuidados de la piel, entre otros aspectos personales, y la describió como una novela que aborda los temas de la envidia, el duelo y el lado perverso de la industria de la belleza. La autora toma el drama familiar y lo entrama con la magia de los cuentos de hadas y un surrealismo bastante terrorífico.

Anteriormente, había leído All's Well y también lo había disfrutado muchísimo. La escritura de Awad me resultó perturbadora, cautivante y confusa en el mejor de los sentidos. Es claro que tiene una gran habilidad para generar esa sensación ominosa de que algo no está bien, aunque no sabemos qué. Las cosas parecen normales, pero hay un corrimiento constante, parecido a lo que sucede en los sueños. Algo en su escritura te desorienta. En Rouge también sentí todo eso, pero más marcado aún. Tengo que admitir que hay momentos que me dieron miedo; una noche me quedé dormida leyendo y cuando me desperté de golpe un par de horas más tarde sentí un verdadero malestar. Awad escribe como si todo el tiempo estuviera a punto de contarte un secreto terrible.

Ahora bien, en mi opinión, en varias instancias el libro se vuelve repetitivo. Entiendo que puede estar relacionado con el "hechizo" que afecta a Mirabelle a partir de cierto punto, pero igual. Pienso que se podrían haber reducido esos momentos reiterativos o redundantes y además que definitivamente la novela podría haber sido un poco más corta, no sé, tal vez unas 30 páginas menos o algo así. Entonces, en relación a lo técnico, pienso que tiene un par de problemas, pero lo que realmente hizo que de todos modos me encantara es su dimensión emotiva. Si bien al principio no lo parece, Rouge es una novela con muchísimo corazón, que tiene como centro una especie de historia de amor, compleja, dañada, pero completamente humana. Hay una cualidad de fragilidad que la vuelve un objeto sensible. Eso es lo que más valoro, más allá de que me fascina la escritura de Awad, el hecho de que pude conectar y sentirme conmovida con el viaje de Mirabelle. También me pareció que la autora trabaja muy bien con los personajes secundarios, Hud, Sylvia, Tad e incluso Noelle, que es más bien un fantasma, una presencia de flashbacks.

En fin, si les interesa algo de todo esto, relaciones madre-hija, el lado oscuro de la belleza y el deseo, espejos mágicos, sectas de millonarios diabólicos, etcétera etcétera, la recomiendo sin duda.

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