Rouge: A Novel

“A clock somewhere ticks and ticks. Didn’t know Mother had a clock like that. Tick, tick, telling me I should move along. All I’ve done so far is unpack the box Sylvia gave me from the shop basement. Disappointing. Mostly old dolls—my childhood dolls, I guess. They all looked exactly alike, like Mother, in fact. Pale skin. Blue eyes of glass that stared up at me unblinking. There was an old clock in there too, with a picture of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves on the face. Funny, I don’t remember owning a clock like that. There was a red diary, locked, no key. A picture book of what looked like a Snow White story. The Beautiful Maiden, it was called. Very worn. Spine cracked. I must have loved that story once.”

This passage includes several sentence fragments—like “Disappointing.” and “Pale skin.”—which reflect Mira’s disjointed thought process. Awad also includes an allusion to “Snow White,” which underlines the novel’s focus on beauty and envy and foreshadows some of the novel’s magical elements, like Seth coming out of the mirror.

“The music is louder now, a celestial drone full of airy chimes. Sort of like what you might hear in a spa. Just then I notice the signs in the arches above each corridor flanking the grand staircase: SIGNATURE RITUALS, reads one. VOYAGES MERVEILLEUX, reads the other. Up on the wall, there’s a screen playing a video of a very white woman with her eyes closed. She has small black discs on either side of her face. She looks to be in absolute bliss. Superimposed over her pale face are lapping ocean waves. A Rendez-Vous with Yourself, it reads in red looping letters by her high, plump cheek. I smile. A spa. Of course. There’s even what looks like a little boutique in that corner over there. Tall glass cabinets full of red bottles and jars. Each cabinet backlit like the products within are works of art. The red jars are just like the ones in Mother’s apartment. She must have come here for treatments. Now I’m really smiling. So this was it, Mother. Your secret place. Probably you loved the little French touches, the old-Hollywood fashion. Sipping red stars.”

This passage provides a vivid sensory description of the standard spa-like elements of La Maison de Méduse. Awad simultaneously includes ominous, uncanny details, like the red color of the champagne and the celestial quality of the music. This contrast foreshadows the subtheme that develops later in the novel: the contrast between beautiful appearance and terrible actions. Additionally, this passage alludes to how beauty standards are rooted in whiteness, from the “very white” and “pale” woman in the advertisement to the use of French to convey luxury.

“Why don’t you turn on the fucking light at least, Mother might have said if she’d caught me. So you can see what you’re doing to yourself? I’d turn to find her standing there in the doorway. Morning cigarette in hand, flawless face watching me as if to say, This is my daughter? This is mine? I can see fine, Mother, I’d say. And Mother would look at the jar clutched tightly in my hand. I’m not so sure about that. She’d walk up to me then. Place her hands on either side of my overcoated face, drenched and sticky with skins. Her cigarette smoke coiled around both of our heads like a gray fog. You know you don’t need any of this shit. You do know that, right? I’ve told you.”

Throughout the novel, Mira processes her grief for her mother through remembered and imagined conversations with Noelle. As her mental state devolves, the conversations become more real to her. At this point in the novel, Mira combines her memory of her mother with her imagination about what she would say about Mira’s skincare routine. Awad also uses visceral, tactile imagery in this passage, with face “sticky with skins” and the coil of cigarette smoke “like a gray fog,” to emphasize the vividness of Mira’s imagining of her mother and the tension in their relationship.

“‘Oh yes. A marvelous journey. Un voyage merveilleux. I can feel it.’ Whenever I hear the word journey, I think of Marva. Her many skin journeys that I follow on her vlogs, step-by-step. Her brightening journey. Her retinoid journey. Her post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation journey. Her skin barrier recovery journey. So many journeys I’ve been on with her in my bedroom dark. I stare at the tiny white creature in my hand. ‘What sort of journey?’ I ask. She looks at me like what a question. ‘The only journey that matters in the end, Daughter of Noelle.’ ‘Retinol?’ I whisper. ‘The soul. A journey of the soul, of course.’ And the white jellyfish in my palm quivers.”

This passage foreshadows Mira’s progression from an obsessive but comparatively benign focus on skincare to her experience with Rouge, during which her soul will be at stake. Awad includes black comedy in the passage with Mira’s guess that the journey is “retinol” rather than the life and death matter it will become. Additionally, this passage satirizes skincare influencers and introduces an anti-capitalist critique by rattling off a list of Marva’s skincare journeys; while Marva is considered an expert, she is always seeking perfection and never attaining it, leading to eternal consumption. Another comedic element emerges in that these skincare journeys seem to cause each other; harsh ingredients like retinoids can cause inflammation, and product overuse can cause skin barrier disruption. Each “journey” creates problems that must be solved with another, creating an infinite loop.

“‘Oh, I love coming here. J’adore. Especially being around…old…things.’ She seemed to choke briefly on the word old. ‘Don’t you?’ She strokes the head of a dusty glass jaguar. ‘They have so very much to teach us.’ She crouches down beside the jaguar so they’re cheek to cheek. Closes her eyes. A strange, unholy bliss passes over her face.”

This passage creates intrigue and character complexity for the woman in red. Despite her and Rouge’s obsession with youth, she expresses a sensual enjoyment of the old objects in the antique shop. Awad uses religious imagery throughout the novel, including Grand-Maman’s devout Catholicism and the repetition of the word “sin.” In this passage, Awad emphasizes the lascivious interactions the woman in red is having with the objects by using the word “unholy.”

“I looked down at the diary. Hesitantly, I turned the page, my whole body suddenly thrumming with the beat of my heart. Blank. I turned the next page. Blank too. I turned the next and the next and the next, more quickly now. Blank and blank and blank—what the fuck? I flipped through the whole book. All fucking blank. All but one page, one sentence. Right in the middle of the book, in the middle of the page. Six words on a single line written in that same red ink in which I’d written my name and age. He came to see me again.”

This passage foreshadows Mira’s encounters with Seth and contextualizes these scenes when they occur. This creates dramatic irony in those later scenes, when young Mira is enthralled by him emerging from the mirror, but Awad has already associated him with foreboding imagery. The inclusion of sensory details about Mira’s thrumming heartbeat and the short, quickly progressing syntax heighten the sense of suspense.

“What’s there? A sky full of stars? Not quite. A glass ceiling, awash with blue-green light. The light of water, of aquariums, fills the dark, steam-thick room. Through the steam, I see them floating by. Red, pulsating, trailing tentacles. Giants compared to the small, glowing white creature beside me. I must be right beneath the Depths. The tank goes far beneath the main floor, so I must be deep under. Wow. It’s terribly beautiful up there. Primordial is a word that floats alone in the lagoon of my mind. I’m in the lagoon of my mind now. Deep in the lagoon, there’s a black box. A black box with many locks, like metal teeth. It lies there on the lagoon floor, half covered in silt. I feel the box open its black mouth.”

Awad uses a metaphor of the mind as a lagoon to suggest that it is deep but open and vulnerable to intruders. The repetition in this paragraph of “lagoon,” “beneath,” and “black box” creates a sense of foreboding and the sensation of sinking into the lagoon. The black box suggests secrecy and relates to the Repressed Memories Affect the Present theme. The juxtaposition of the large red jellyfish with the small white one foreshadows the fate of Mira’s little jellyfish. Another juxtaposition—“terribly beautiful”—reflects the book’s critique of the beauty industry.

“There’s a game the girls at school play called Honestly. We sit in a circle and take turns closing our eyes. When you close them, you ask the circle, Am I beautiful? and people raise their hands if they think Yes and don’t raise them if they think, No, sorry. And someone counts the hands for you, and that’s how you know honestly. The last time we played, every girl, when she closed her eyes, sang, No one is raising their hand, no one is raising their hand, and we all laughed, though mostly we raised our hands. When it was my turn, I closed my eyes and sang, No one is raising their hand, no one is raising their hand, and no one laughed.”

Awad emphasizes Childhood’s Impact on Self-Esteem, subverting a typical childhood game format by including an insidious focus on beauty. The juxtaposition between the game’s format and content is jarring, reflecting the horror of imposing beauty standards on children (and by extension, on adults). This scene also reflects Mira’s exclusion from the white beauty standard because she is half-Egyptian.

“You might find you have a few blanks after this, didn’t someone say that? I recall a hand leading me down a dark, endless hall. I held the hand like I was blind. You might find you’re in a bit of a fog. But you’ll see the results in the mirror quite clearly. Letting go is so worth it. What did I let go of? I wondered. But all I said was Oh good. I hope so. Can’t expect miracles, of course. Know better by now. But maybe I’ll have a bit more of a glow today. That would be a very nice surprise. I take a quick look up in Mother’s ceiling mirror before I go out the door to meet those voices, getting louder now. Oh, look at that. Yes. I do seem to be glowing a little today. How nice.”

Awad emphasizes Mira’s blankly sanguine state after her treatment through syntax, from sentence fragments to vague descriptors like “very nice,” which contrasts with the highly specific and vivid imagery in earlier chapters. Her casual statements, “I do seem to be glowing” and “how nice,” contrast with the ominous lack of awareness and memory she is experiencing and produce suspense. The disconnect is also represented in the lack of detail provided about the treatment’s results—for a coveted procedure that’s meant to be revolutionary, all Mira can say about it is she’s “glowing a little.”

“My reflection has wandered off, I see. Wandering the shop floor just like Mother does. Like mother did, what is it with me and tenses today? I’d call myself back but that seems like too strange a thing to do. Call oneself back. And anyway, maybe it’s just this glitch in the glass today. Following me from mirror to mirror like the chimes seem to be following me. They’re playing here now. Right here in the shop, right around my ears. It would make me maybe a little nervous if they didn’t sound so pretty. My reflection seems to be swaying a little to their music as she wanders away. Smiling, though we’re not loving what we see hanging on the racks. With my eyes, I try to follow her from mirror to mirror, Mother installed so many along the shop walls. Where is she going? Where am I going, I should say. Do reflections really wander off like this?”

Mira’s confused tenses reflect her addled state after the treatment. However, the slips into present tense to refer to a recently lost loved one are also a representation of grief. Awad thus blurs the line between Mira’s loss of self through her experience at Rouge and the effects of grief she is experiencing. The imagery of Mira’s reflection wandering away symbolizes her gradual loss of sense of self. It also cultivates the surreal tone in this portion of the novel, as magic has crept into Mira’s waking life.

“‘You were also at the hotel bar the other night. Then I saw you at the house. You had a black bear then.’ And you kissed me, didn’t you kiss me? ‘I did.’ He smiles. ‘And I still have the beard, by the way.’ He points to his desk, where I see there are a number of mannequin heads lined up, each of them sporting different configurations of wig and eyewear. I see the black beard hanging on a white face. Those strange spectacles. I look back at him and he puts a finger to his lips. ‘Shhh,’ he whispers. ‘It’s resting.’”

Mannequins are a motif throughout the novel and relate to its discussion of appearance versus reality and what defines humanness. This passage occurs before Mira knows Hud is investigating Rouge. The ominous imagery of the disembodied mannequin heads and his joking comment about the beard “resting” create suspense regarding his relationship with the spa and his intentions.

“In the waiting room, I drank the blood vessel water. The pomegranate seed water, I mean. It was very cold, vaguely sweet, with a bitter finish that surprised and delighted me. I stared up at the horrified white face masks on the red walls. Twisted in varying degrees of terror. As if each face had been frozen confronting its worst nightmare, really. It was lovely. The glowing woman I met last time was sitting there beneath them, reading her red magazine. The one who I thought might be mixed, like me. Ethnically ambivalent. Ambivalent, is that the word I mean? Hello again, I said. We must be on the same treatment schedule. She looked up at me like she’d never seen me before. I’m sorry, she said, have we met? I didn’t want to confuse her, so I said, Sorry, maybe I have it wrong. I’ve been confusing names and faces lately. And she said, Funny. I’m confusing them too. I’m told it’s a harmless psychotrope. Side effect.”

The description in his passage involves multiple senses, including taste and vision, creating a vivid and eerie scene. The slippage between blood vessels and pomegranates, and between the terror on the masks and Mira’s description of them as “lovely” suggests the mind-altering effect of the spa. The reference to the other woman in the treatment room as ethnically ambiguous uses wordplay to exemplify the racist component of the novel’s theme: The Insidious Nature of the Beauty Industry. “Ambivalent” means having contradictory feelings about something, reflecting how white beauty standards are imposed on women of color.

“Let’s skip cleansing and go right to acid, my favorite. Mother’s favorite too. Acid is like cleansing but better, right, Mother? It goes deep into the ick you can’t see with your human eye, and it just melts that away like a witch. Shall we do the one that smells like it’ll numb your face or the one that smells like burning? You pick, Mother. Mother’s smile says, Surprise me. Now normally, if your face was on fire, you’d scream like a witch, wouldn’t you? Not me and mother. We smile while our faces burn, we love it so. Because we know magic is happening, just like in a fairy tale.”

The description of burning acid as an “enjoyable” skin treatment provides a vivid metaphor for the lengths to which people will go for beauty. The allusions to witches and fairy tales contribute to the novel’s genre blend of Gothic fairytale and horror.

“First things first: get rid of these gray headless monstrosities. I say monstrosities because when I look at them straight on, I see they’re just ugly dress forms. And yet when I look in the window glass where Mother is, they’re most definitely corpses. So which are they, Mother? Dress forms or corpses. Mother’s face says potato potahto, and I have to agree in this case. The point is really to get them out of her garden. So I topple them—one, two, three. Because they’re already dead, they don’t feel a thing.”

Awad uses black comedy in this passage, referencing the expression “potato potahto” in descriptions of death and corpses. Mira increasingly anthropomorphizes mannequins, which is indicative of her declining mental state. It also contributes to the novel’s treatment of what it means to be alive and human, particularly in the case of those whose souls have been taken by Rouge.

“‘Holy fuck,’ he whispers into my ear. All around me, my sisters are sighing at the touch of the beautiful detective. Our souls open like a flower opens to the light. Entrancing, whispers my sister by the flowers. So long as we’re just using him, mumbles my sister on the couch. Finally, the sea, sighs my sister by the water. I lean in and kill him on the lips and he kills me right back. Kisses. Deeply. I taste roses. I feel the want in his hands and lips, deep as my own want, its mirror. Deep as the mystery of the first mirror.”

Mira’s anthropomorphizing of the mannequins deepens as she begins to hear them speaking to her. The use of parapraxis occurs throughout the novel in the speech of those who have experienced Rouge treatments. Whereas instances of word slippage are usually unique, “kill” for “kiss” is repeated with increasing frequency toward the end of the novel, creating suspense.

“We’re lying together now on the table, he and I, and in the glass, the jellyfish is beating wildly like my own heart, like the black buried thing inside me. He’s taken his mask off so I can see his face. His face lights up the architecture of me, my cage of bones brightening. Not just his smile, but his whole face is the movies. As beautiful and unreal as a dream, but somehow right here with me. I must have watched those movies a thousand times in the dark, on dusty TV screens. I’ve seen him on another kind of screen too, a screen of glass. Smiling like he is right now. ‘We lay together like this once, remember?’ he says. ‘In your silly pink room with the dolls and spiders. Under those dumb stars.’”

Awad uses the metaphor “his whole face is the movies” to indicate the entrancing superficiality that defines Seth. The phrase “is the movies” is unique and syntactically odd, which expresses Mira’s altered mental state. The allusion to Mira’s childhood room enhances the ominous tone of the passage by connoting the sexual exploitation of a child. Seth’s descriptions of the room contradict Mira’s descriptions earlier; he calls it “silly,” highlights spiders hiding in it, and calls the stars on her ceiling “dumb.” This reflects the depths of his exploitation; she felt her passion earnestly, while he was always manipulating her.

“The next step, Tom says, is the trickiest of all. To go into Mother’s bedroom. To her vanity with the three mirror faces. To find the jar of night cream on the table. The one she uses every night. Rubs tenderly into her face in counterclockwise circles. I sometimes watch from her bed, making wishes in my head until she tells me to leave. Why do I have to leave? I always ask her. Because this is Mother’s secret, Mother says, and her face is suddenly a closed door. The night cream smells like perfume and is named after the sea in French. Because the cream has red algae in it, Mother told me once. Plus a magic sea broth. Like a potion, I said. Yes, Mother laughed. Exactly like that. Mother needs all the help she can get these days. I look at the jar shining on the vanity in the blue light of the moon through the window. I’m supposed to open it, Tom said. Take the dark red powder from Tom’s black bag and mix it in. Easy, Tom said. I picture Mother’s throat closing. I think of the open throat of the rose whose petals I plucked.”

Awad emphasizes the contrast between Mira’s childlike innocence and the nefarious action she is performing in this passage. The detail of “magic sea broth” is a reference to La Mer’s “miracle broth,” a marketing term—Mira extrapolating from this term that the cream is a magic potion emphasizes her naivety. She thinks about the cream as magic near thinking about her mother’s throat closing. The passage emphasizes the drastic actions a focus on beauty can prompt, as well as Seth’s exploitation of Mira. This climactic scene takes place in a memory, allowing Awad to emphasize the significant effects of the past on the present.

“The mirror shatters. It makes a sound so much louder than my scream. I’ve fallen to the floor. Lying here just like Mother was. Not screaming anymore. All is suddenly silent. Broken glass falling all around me, so many shards, shiny and sharp. They fall and fall over me in slow motion like the prettiest snow. The snow hurts terribly. I feel it cutting me everywhere, deeper than the thorns cut. I watch my blood flow onto the floor, onto my bed of snowy glass like a small red puddle. The puddle becomes a pool. I stare at the man in the crumpled picture in my hand, his smiling face eclipsed by red. And still it snows more.”

The color red is a motif throughout the novel that emphasizes the close connection between beauty and injury. In this climactic scene, which is the turning point for Mira and Noelle’s relationship and the catalyst for her shift from child to adult, Awad uses a metaphor to compare glass to white snow. The blending of white, connoting innocence, and red, connoting injury and worldliness, symbolizes the loss of Mira’s childhood.

“And as he says this, my body grows cold. I’m deep in the cold, rippling ocean of Tom’s eyes. ‘I grew up swimming in your eyes,’ I whisper. ‘I became more beautiful in my way and I grew taller and Mother grew shorter and older and her smile turned into a smirk. And the world never got cold, never turned the color of Mother again. It stayed green and blue like the great Pacific. I floated on its white waves while Mother sank to the silty bottom. Quit her acting career and opened up a dress shop. She gave it my name. I got a job as a princess and even dated a prince. And a fellow princess. But they were nothing like you. There was a space there, too, like the one between me and mother. Like the one between me and everyone forever after. There has been a space between me and everything ever since you turned to smoke. There has been a wall of glass.’”

This passage describes Mira’s character trajectory and the effect of Seth’s actions on her development. Despite her confused, post-treatment state, she experiences a moment of clarity regarding the distance her relationship with Seth caused between her and her mother—and between her and the rest of the world. The phrase “color of Mother” indicates the pervasive impact of maternal relationships on how children see and interact with the world. These details intervene with Mira’s unreliable narration, which generally underplays Noelle’s love for her daughter; in this moment of clarity, Mira reveals that in many ways, she was at the center of her mother’s life.

“She begins to do the opposite of smile again. ‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘Please. Look at me. I’ll be your glassthing.’ She looks at me and I look back at her for a while like I’m really looking. Like I’m finding the words in her face though I already know what to say. ‘You’re beautiful,’ I say. ‘Like a lake of ice. Smooth and Bright.’ This makes her smile again. ‘It’s true?’ ‘Very. Can you tell me what I am now? What about me?’ She looks at me. ‘There’s a Glow,’ she says. A Glow like a light. Moonbright.’ We smile at each other in the fog. Who needs glassthings when we can give each other our eyes? But oh god. Feet sounds now. We hear them coming our way. A gong thing ringing through the chimes. Rings through me. Making me vibrate like a bell. I watch the fog clear like clouds parting.”

Awad uses simplified language to reflect the women’s confused mental state and to emphasize the baseness of their need for external validation. Rather than feeling concerned about why they cannot remember the words for things like smile and mirror, both women seek solace in being told they look beautiful. The passage emphasizes the lure of being called beautiful by someone else. The capitalization of nouns like “Smooth,” “Bright,” and “Glow” highlights the power of these signifiers while the women are in this state.

“‘Lake,’ I say. ‘You’re beautiful.’ Though I’m no longer so sure about that when I look at Lake. I think of the word that swam up like a gray fish when she asked how she looked. Dead. As I look at her Brightened face, more words come swimming. Eradicated. Destroyed. Used.”

Awad uses the simile of thoughts as swimming fish to emphasize the subconscious nature of Mira’s negative thoughts about her new friend’s superficially beautiful appearance. Trading one’s soul for beauty and what it means to be human is a prevalent subtheme toward the end of the novel. Awad’s word choice—dead, eradicated, destroyed, used—emphasizes the negative and dangerous impacts of the search for beauty and advances the Insidious Nature of the Beauty Industry theme.

“I see it torn and thrashing between their bodies. I see mouths full of red between the black veils. Chewing and slurping up the many red tentacles of Lake’s jelly. Dangling from their mouths like a bloody, alive spaghetti. Every mouth at the table and every gloved hand covered in blood and fresh bits. And the Queen of Snow is smiling. Even as her white-as-snow face gets splattered with the reddest blood of Lake’s jelly that they eat so violently. But the Queen of Snow doesn’t seem to mind. She licks whatever blood splatter comes to her face with the tip of her long, pink, hunting tongue. Whatever bits she licks make her shudder with pleasure. Her eyes roll back into her head with the pleasure. Meanwhile someone is screaming and screaming. The wildest, loudest screams I have ever heard. Like they are being physically torn apart. Ripped wide open, and they are alive and seeing it at the same time. The screams deafen my ears, where are they coming from? Every mouth is too full of jelly to scream. Lake. Lake at the end of the table, standing between the two smiling Statues of Cold. Lake barely standing, the Statues of Cold are holding her up by her arms. Lake screaming as her jelly is eaten before her eyes. Screaming as if she is the one being eaten, even though she is not, it is only her jelly.”

This passage, in which the rich diners eat Lake’s jelly, is the novel’s climax and lays bare the horror behind Rouge. Whereas much of the horror imagery throughout the novel is oblique or metaphorical, this scene is a visceral, sensory description of a horrifying event. Awad uses violent verbs here—“thrashing,” “chewing,” “slurping,” “ripped,”—as well as shocking similes—“like a bloody, alive spaghetti” to paint a disturbing scene. These images are juxtaposed with the diners’ pleasure, painting their pleasure as perverse. The act of eating the jellies symbolizes the damage that can be caused by the pursuit of beauty.

“Of you and me, Sunshine. Of us. Standing in an orchard. A sea of trees and September light. You’re handing me an apple you picked yourself. For you, Mother, you say. You say it matches my Chanel lipstick, my best red. And your face is so full of sunshine. No shadows yet. You reach out to hand it to me. And I’m afraid of how beautiful you are. How much I love you. How I won’t be able to protect you from this place. From me. My places that I go. One is locked away in the closet. Cracked and turned to the wall, but one day you’ll find it. You’ll stand in front of its shining face, not knowing why I turned it away. That I’m only protecting you from myself. The things I can’t change. The things I wish I could. I’ll try to stop it in my clumsy ways that are out of love, that won’t work.”

This novel shifts to Noelle’s perspective after her soul, in the form of the jelly, saves Mira. Like her daughter, Noelle narrates in a first-person perspective, sharing her version of the truth with the reader (which contrasts with Noelle’s perception of her). Throughout the novel, Mira has reflected a sense of distance from her mother, feeling as though her mother disliked or dismissed her. Here, Awad shares Noelle’s true intentions and feelings about her daughter and her desire to protect Mira from the difficulty of being a woman and pursuing beauty under patriarchy. Awad emphasizes the complexity of mother-daughter relationships and the inevitability of passing some things on to one’s children. This is embodied in the apple’s redness, which Mira compares to her mother’s designer lipstick, even at a young age.