Bewitched & Bloodshot

The best and only way I can describe “Rouge,” Mona Awad’s fourth and latest novel, is that it feels like a feverish dream. It feels like a restless night of hot and cold—like wondering if the sweltering heat will ever subside and let you breathe. And, when it does, it leaves you sitting up in a cold sweat, wondering if the journey you have just gone through was real or a figment of your imagination. It was a dizzying experience that I could not get enough of.

In “Rouge,” we are introduced to Mirabelle “Belle” Nour, a shopgirl from Montreal who returns to Southern California after her estranged mother suddenly dies. Once she arrives in California, Belle quickly realizes that everything is off. Her mother’s run-down apartment is riddled with broken mirrors and mysterious red vials, and it is discovered that she owes a considerable amount of money to a mysterious spa group that calls itself “La Maison de Méduse.” What follows is a mystifying, seductive journey into the beauty underworld, exposing its dark sides and how it can prey on our insecurities in favor of vanity.

Belle’s obsessive nature surrounding skincare is evident from the beginning. She frantically describes the plethora of products lining her bathroom counters bearing intense names like “Overnight Glycolic Resurfacing Matrix” and “Universal Brightening Peel Pads.” She takes delight in people complimenting her skin as well as the ritual of her routine. She describes how her face burns in a “beautiful” pain and turns a diabolical shade of red.

It is disturbing but truthful to a degree. Awad takes what we already know yet may not want to admit and dials it up to 11 throughout her novel. That is, the beauty industry has long capitalized on people’s desire to change or improve themselves, even when unnecessary. There is a difference between wanting to take care of one’s skin and being educated on the subject and letting narcissism consume us and our wallets. “Rouge” is a criticism of the latter, with Awad forcing us to look into our own cracked mirrors and ask ourselves if we have turned self-care into self-destruction.

As we walk alongside Belle through the cavernous halls of La Maison de Meduse, the luxurious illusion of cosmetic treatments is stripped, and we are presented with something uglier. In one standout moment, Belle waits in a blood-red waiting room for one of her treatments and watches as a group of elderly patients obsessively stare at themselves through a glass tank of jellyfish. They stand there like they are watching an attraction, their hands and cheeks pressed against the glass. Suddenly, a red curtain is dropped, and the tanks disappear. Immediately, chaos ensues. People fall to their knees, their cries of anguish echoing throughout the room. Awad even describes how one woman hugs her chest like “she’s clutching a dagger someone stabbed into her heart.”

Awad tackles a conversation our society is no stranger to having and refuses to ease up on unreachable standards surrounding aging and our imperfections. It is an expectation we unanimously agree is wrong. Still, somehow, it has become increasingly relevant as the fear of looking less than perfect plagues younger generations each year that passes. Awad’s writing is sharp and painful at times even, as she tears apart the hierarchy of beauty that creates horror stories rather than fairy tales.