Like drowning in Poison (the perfume,) one review read. Another compared the reading experience to the intoxication of sniffing nail polish remover.
It's a heady trip, to be sure, this look at the obsession with beauty that pulls together fairy tales (Snow White, Beauty and the Beast,) mythology (Demeter and Persephone,) mother/daughter relationships, the nature of grief, the corrosive danger of envy, a fair amount of hallucinatory goings-on, and, oh yes, Tom Cruise.
Awad is a skillful writer and I especially enjoyed her use of word play as the protagonist looses her grip on language. Her descriptions are lush, if repetitive. But perhaps this speaks to our times.
I have been struck, during the two iterations of the current political regime, that the insistence on a particular sort of look trumps (as it were) an insistence on actual experience. From the eerie shining faces of Ivanka and Jared to the rugged camera-ready good looks of Hegseth to the interchangeable flowing locks (extension augmented) and plumped lips of the women, in DC these days, appearance is everything.
As it is in Rouge --everything. And in the end, nothing.
A very strange book, to be sure. Entertaining and unsettling.
3 comments:
Yes, the women around tRump all have longish hair. He must pick them by their looks sadly not their abilities.
Public officials with wavy hair hanging over their breasts almost to their waists, false eyelashes almost touching their eyebrows, makeup caked on, tight tight clothes. Noem stood in front of a cage packed with male prisoners looking that way. I am ashamed.
Of course Magats would say I'm just jealous. 🙄
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