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.
