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.
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.
Add to your library to track progress and write reviews
Add to your library to track progress and write reviews
Find Rouge Mona Awad in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
Find Rouge Mona Awad in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
2 books in catalog
Combining dark comedy, psychological horror, and satire, contemporary fiction often explores body image, obsession, female relationships, and artistic ambition. Mona Awad gained widespread recognition with her satire Bunny, which follows an isolated creative writing student drawn into a sinister, cult-like clique of wealthy classmates. Her surreal narratives examine the dark side of intimacy, beauty standards, and creative production with sharp humor and chilling atmosphere.
Awad has established a distinct voice in Canadian and American literature through novels that blur the boundary between reality and psychological delusion. Recognized by literary icon Margaret Atwood as her heir, she weaves dark fairy-tale motifs and satire into character-driven stories that interrogate contemporary social pressures.
Born on August 22, 1978, in Montreal, Quebec, Awad was raised by an Egyptian father who immigrated to Canada in the 1970s and a French-Canadian mother. She moved to Mississauga, Ontario, at age thirteen, attending Father Michael Goetz Secondary School. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from York University in 2004, followed by a Master of Arts at the University of Edinburgh, a Master of Fine Arts at Brown University, and a PhD from the University of Denver.
Awad launched her novelistic career with 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and received the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. She subsequently joined the creative writing faculty at Syracuse University as an assistant professor in 2020, where she teaches fiction while publishing award-winning novels and short fiction in venues such as The New Yorker, McSweeney's, and The Walrus.
Awad's writing blends gothic horror, absurd satire, and psychological realism. Her works frequently center on female interiority, loneliness, physical transformation, and the toxic dimensions of female camaraderie. By placing her characters in heightened, uncanny situations—such as sinister skin-care clinics, surreal academic cliques, or pain-management struggles connected to Shakespearean theater—Awad exposes the societal expectations placed on women's bodies and aesthetic appearances.
2 books in catalog
Combining dark comedy, psychological horror, and satire, contemporary fiction often explores body image, obsession, female relationships, and artistic ambition. Mona Awad gained widespread recognition with her satire Bunny, which follows an isolated creative writing student drawn into a sinister, cult-like clique of wealthy classmates. Her surreal narratives examine the dark side of intimacy, beauty standards, and creative production with sharp humor and chilling atmosphere.
Awad has established a distinct voice in Canadian and American literature through novels that blur the boundary between reality and psychological delusion. Recognized by literary icon Margaret Atwood as her heir, she weaves dark fairy-tale motifs and satire into character-driven stories that interrogate contemporary social pressures.
Born on August 22, 1978, in Montreal, Quebec, Awad was raised by an Egyptian father who immigrated to Canada in the 1970s and a French-Canadian mother. She moved to Mississauga, Ontario, at age thirteen, attending Father Michael Goetz Secondary School. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from York University in 2004, followed by a Master of Arts at the University of Edinburgh, a Master of Fine Arts at Brown University, and a PhD from the University of Denver.
Awad launched her novelistic career with 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and received the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. She subsequently joined the creative writing faculty at Syracuse University as an assistant professor in 2020, where she teaches fiction while publishing award-winning novels and short fiction in venues such as The New Yorker, McSweeney's, and The Walrus.
Awad's writing blends gothic horror, absurd satire, and psychological realism. Her works frequently center on female interiority, loneliness, physical transformation, and the toxic dimensions of female camaraderie. By placing her characters in heightened, uncanny situations—such as sinister skin-care clinics, surreal academic cliques, or pain-management struggles connected to Shakespearean theater—Awad exposes the societal expectations placed on women's bodies and aesthetic appearances.
