" Rouge is a fever dream—a brilliant intense unforgettable horror story about a beauty cult
with a deeply moving mother-daughter story at its core. Mona Awad’s signature and singular
imagination and black humor and empathy are on full display here and her wild-ride of a tale
is masterfully grounded in the emotional devastation of childhood and grief. I loved every word
of this." —Laura Zigman author of Small World "There is nobody else like Mona Awad
daring enough to plunge her hands—rings and all—into the viscera of story and discover an
unsettling beauty within. ROUGE is her most magnetic work yet a thrilling dystopian romp that
knows that beneath the glossy aspirational veneer of self-care lurks the same old gothic
abyss." —Alexandra Kleeman author of Something New Under the Sun "A brilliant biting
critique of western beauty standards as well as a soaring phantasmagoric Angela Carter-esque
fairy tale about trauma and the loss of self. Rouge is deeply unsettling funny obsessive
and unlike anything I' ve read. A truly mesmerizing read." —Paul Tremblay author of The
Cabin at the End of the World and A Head Full of Ghosts "Unsettling whimsical and
moving Rouge is an authentic innovative kind of narrative magic that' s both surreal and
absolute. A striking novel of incandescence and heart." —Iain Reid author of I' m
Thinking of Ending Things 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 her mother 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.
