A Book about Grief, Identity, and Self-Care

 Rouge by Mona Awad

Rouge book cover

Rouge by Mona Awad is not what I was expecting, but this was in a good way. When I initially read the description, I didn’t anticipate how trippy and surreal this book would be. I also wasn’t sure if the mother daughter dynamic in the book would be relevant, but I think that Belle’s kind of quest to define herself and at the same time to not disappoint her mother is relevant to most people. In some other ways, this book also reminded me of a few other books I recently read about the kind of “self-care” industry that promotes healthy living and taking care of one’s skin and beauty, but at what cost (Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh)—kind of like what Jia Tolentino criticizes in “Always be Optimizin’”. Ultimately, these kinds of companies and programs become parasitic and require too much, preying on our desires to be attractive, younger looking, more energetic, but taking more and more from us. That is what Belle encounters in her moment of grief after learning of her mother’s death. Although she did not have an ideal relationship with her mother, Belle always sought to please her mother. Yet, she never seemed to live up to her mother’s beauty standards. Even as an adult, she is haunted by this and seems to be plagued by the insecurities of someone in puberty rather than an adult woman. Thus, Belle’s grief and trauma are twofold—she’s grieving the loss of her mother while also struggling to fit into the unfair expectations and standards of a woman. In part of her grief, she begins to adopt her mother’s lifestyle and ways, moving into her apartment, sleeping with one of the poolboys that took care of her mother, and even working at the dress shop. Despite being a book about the death of a parent, I found Belle’s transformation during some of these parts pretty funny—surreal but also absurd, especially in her interactions with customers. I really enjoyed Belle’s narration and blunt commentary. She was entertaining, but as she underwent a transformation to become more like her mother, her perspective and observations also changed. I won’t spoil too much, but this was a trippy, surreal book about grief, identity, beauty and appearance. It was also mysterious and intriguing, and I found it hard to put the book down. Parts of it reminded me of Rosemary’s Baby, in that there are hints of some kind of weird cult in the book, while other parts reminded me a lot of Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, where a woman is just seeking to optimize herself and find the ways to be the best person she can be. In reading this, I was also able to find Bunny, one of Awad’s other books, which I can’t wait to read. I highly recommend this book, especially if you like mysteries and surreal type stories. I actually hope they consider making a movie of this book, because in some ways it is cinematic.