In Canadian author Mona Awad’s nightmarish new novel, a cult of beauty-obsessed Californian women pursue the ultimate prize, which they call the Glow. The protagonist, Belle, goes to San Diego to pack up her deceased mother’s things. Mother was gorgeous and cruel in the Mommie Dearest mould. She had been involved with La Maison de Méduse, a mysterious spa – and now they want to recruit Belle, too. But who are they really, and what are the unholy roots of US beauty standards?
The focus on physical hyper-self-consciousness and woman’s inhumanity to woman continues the theme of Awad’s previous novels – Bunny, about an insufferable American college sorority who all address one another by the book’s title, and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, a bildungsroman about a self-loathing young woman.
Awad’s work has a love or loathe it flavour. Her fans will find all the familiar ingredients in Rouge, which throws a lot into the mix, where it congeals like a rancid homemade face mask. Tragic old Hollywood legends, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast, Cronenberg and Lynch, Man Ray’s mask-like women, Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes, Sunset Boulevard, cursed mirrors and haunted dolls – it’s all there. There’s also a soft porn element – think of the masked balls in Fifty Shades or Eyes Wide Shut – as veiled beauties seduce Belle into their demonic facial black mass, where satanic red jellyfish enable deluded old ladies to live for ever like gorgeous cursed vampires … I am not joking, and, indeed, Rouge is not without humour, as a running gag about Tom Cruise demonstrates.
But overall, it’s like being drowned in thick poison – or Poison, by Dior – with red lips and white skin, dark silk and crushed petals on every page. It’s even there in the stagey, sacrificial names. Belle makes for miserable company, such is her constant contempt, mistrust and objectification of other women. In a typical description, one woman is “beautiful in a way that destroys me a little”. A shop customer smells of “an insidious freshness” and even a mannequin is sneered at for “smiling at me mysteriously, cruel sister … gazing coyly”. Another woman is described thus: “The customer’s back is to me, but I know the type, I can see her face in my mind’s eye, hear her awful voice in my head.” Even a female cat doesn’t escape – it is described as acting “whorishly”, twice.
There are a few crackles of freshness. Early scenes, in which Belle lies awake, curled around her laptop “like it’s a fire”, watching YouTube beauty videos, strike home, as do satirical cameos by surf bros, rich California guys and Real Housewives types. Awad is great when she gets real. A woman invites Belle for a one-night stand, “but I knew I couldn’t go back with her. It would have been like fucking my own loneliness”. So brilliant – and yet, one line later, we are back to the dirge: “Also, it was Resurfacing Night, the night I apply my Radiance Rescue Exfoliating Dewtopia and follow it up with my NuuFace.”
Rouge provokes the befuddled headiness you get from inhaling nail polish remover. Awad has true commitment, a unique register and a great ability to synthesise her influences. But readers might not enjoy being trapped inside a 384-page Lana Del Rey song.
Rouge by Mona Awad is published by Simon & Schuster (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
