Rouge by Mona Awad

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 escalatewhen a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother's demise, followed by a cryptic video abouta transformative spa experience.

With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace ofLa Maison de Mduse, 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 WhitemeetsEyes Wide Shutin this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humour and seductive horror,Rougeexplores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry as well as the danger of internalizing itspitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals,Rougeholds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath. (From Penguin Random House Canada)

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Awad is a Boston-based author whose debut short story collection13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Colorado Book Award and was shortlisted forthe 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. She is also the author of the novelsBunnyandAll's Well.

Interviews with Mona Awad

The Next Chapter19:39Mona Awads Rouge explores the beauty myth with a horror tinged take on Snow White

Ryan B. Patrick talks to acclaimed author Mona Awad about her new novel, Rouge.

20:17Mona Awad on All's Well

Mona Awad talks to Shelagh Rogers about her latest novel, All's Well.

Other books by Mona Awad