After reading “Rouge,” you might reconsider your skin care routine. Mona Awad’s books are best described as a fever dream.
I remember reading her book “Bunny” with an unhinged main character who has deep psychological issues. I felt that I was just as clueless as the character in the book. This technique makes Awad’s writing style unique.
When you read one of Awad’s novels, you may feel like you are one of the characters in the story, as though you don’t have all the answers. The author has you in the palm of her hand.
Usually as readers, everything is revealed by the author when it comes to events, the story and what’s going on with the character’s lives, but in Awad’s world, it feels like the reader is one of the characters because she builds suspense.
Some readers may not like that. Some readers prefer having everything make sense when they turn the last page. For this reason, Awad doesn’t have a good rating on “Goodreads.”
I think this demonstrates that you should not trust social media when it comes to rating books.
“Rouge” explores themes like beauty, envy and grief within a context of horror. The main character Belle is living in Canada when she receives the news that her mother died in an accident. She goes back to San Diego to deal with it. Belle is half-Egyptian and half-white, just like the Awad. She has an unhealthy relationship with her skin, and also has a complicated and toxic skincare routine similar to Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho.”
The author uses Belle as a tool to reflect how beauty standards put pressure on people to attain unrealistic standards.
There is also a tact examination of the mother-daughter relationship. Belle has a complex relationship with her mother. Belle never felt close to her as they don’t share the same skin tone. Belle never accepted the fact she was a person of color and always envied her mother for being white.
After arriving in San Diego, Belle discovers that her mother used to go to a fancy French spa. The story starts to unfold when Belle receives an invitation to this spa, and it turns out that the ‘spa’ is actually a bizarre cult that feeds on other people’s souls.
What I loved most about the novel is the clever phrasing. Awad plays with words like “sin-skin.” It begs the question, how far can someone go for beauty?
“The only journey that matters in the end, Daughter of Noelle … is the soul. A journey of the soul, of course.”
This dark novel uses a mirror as symbolism. Legend has it that spirits resting in your mirror will suck your soul through the mirror if you stare at it too much or look at it in the dark, but mirrors also offer a door to another dimension.
While reading “Rouge” was a fun journey, it left me with many questions. It is a novel that is open to all kinds of interpretations. There are several events that are not explained which may not appeal to all readers.
