Book Reviews: Rouge by Mona Awad

While I enjoyed reading Rouge, I must enter this review by saying it fell flat compared to Bunny which will go down as one of my favorite reads of the year. In the way I thought Bunny had something interesting to say about changing yourself and cannibalizing your life for academia Rouge has similar things to say about trauma and beauty in general- but the delivery felt disconnected.

I initially thought the beauty industry plot tied to a fairy tale was half baked, deeply insecure heroine fell so closely to typical dystopian beauty industry feminist takes that I had a hard time caring but the novel quickly devolved into a Virginia Wolff-esque stream of consciousness fairy tale of a woman lobotomizing herself from her grief and responsibilities a la my year of r&r… but French. I much preferred the embedded story about trauma and grief to the frame narrative about appearance and commodification.

I won’t lie this novel is mainly style over substance, but I do have a soft spot for Awad’s ‘singsong’ey call and response comedic style of writing and the situational humor is perfectly directed at my brand of humor and interests. The narration is held up by her style and she accomplished many interesting novel writing techniques within the prose. For example, I liked the intrinsic tying of a physical object to a predetermined consciousness like the shows that follow her mothers paths like with the shoes. I was interested in some of the narration techniques Awad was using, around pg. 333 I almost felt like I was in distant 1st person, which isn’t a thing so that was cool. I still think in a novel that had this much room to breath I expected more.

Towards the middle when Awad starts blending the character’s consciousness into the background by performing “the procedure” I started to lose her thematic intentions a bit. The insecurity of her mother’s beauty and whiteness seeks as an alienating factor throughout her childhood where she turns toward the attractions of old men to feel validation. Still after her mother’s death why does she start to take her place? What is the implication there for somebody dealing with grief and insecurity. 

I was getting an under current of molestation throughout her interactions with Tom (Seth) and the idea her mother was in some ways trying to protect her from growing up to fast while still failing in regards to acknowledging and validating her beauty. There was the continued metaphor of her being groomed by Seth- prepared for the trauma operation that happens later and in some ways he’s preparing her by causing the trauma. There was maybe something to say here about the operation being linked to trauma/ how the skincare gurus are feeding on it. The actual fantasy/storybook element of this story is far enough removed in the stream of consciousness narration that it barely performed its duty as a shell. Around Chapter 1 the novel starts to transition from something allegorical into something more literal but also more fantastical. The plot takes hold, there is a mystery, detective, Belle starts to really lose grip on reality. 

Once the frame narrative is shed and the emotions and childhood trauma come to a head in the final few chapters I like where the story goes. I like the complexity in the mother & Mirabelle’s relationship and their desire to connect to each other but not really knowing how. I like the character growth she shoes in her interpersonal life- the renewed way she looks at Sylvia’s antics. The novel really does resolve on this very traditional and classic plot structure which is fine but jarring given the stylistic liberties. Her mother in a lot of ways was complex, and failed a lot, but tried so hard to protect her daughter from her own mistakes which was very endearing. She wanted to save her in a lot of ways from her own mother but ended up realizing in a lot of ways she could protect her better. I felt a strong sense of empathy with this inter-generational trauma storyline and have similar relationships to my own mother and grandmother so it was interesting to see that reflected in this novel. 

The actual ending felt quite bittersweet- that Hudson may have gotten the procedure and ended up without a soul in perpetual trauma. I do feel like 50 pages or so could have been cut from this novel between when she gets her first procedure to when she finally uncovers Hud Hudson’s true identity. This book was a trying read- the pacing was off and the stylistic elements really distance the reader from the thematic elements of the story. At the same time those stylistic elements gave way to a lot of interest, and I was ultimately left with a lot of room to hypothesize and wonder about Awad’s meanings for various parts of the novel.