From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic
fairy tale about a lonely dress shop clerk whose mother?s unexpected death sends
her down a treacherous path in pursuit of youth and beauty. Can she escape her
mother?s fate?and find a connection that is more than skin deep?. For as long as
she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare
videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself
back in Southern California, dealing with her mother?s considerable debts and
grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a
strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about
her mother?s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa
experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed
embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa her mother to which
her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her
(and her mother?s) obsession with the mirror?and the great shimmering depths
(and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass. Snow White meets Eyes
Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and
the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and
seductive horror, ROUGE explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry?as
well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California
sunshine and blood-red rose petals, ROUGE holds up a warped mirror to our
relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the
wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.