Mona Awad: Margaret Atwood's "Literary Heir Apparent"

I’ve had the luxury to dive into the works of Mona Awad this summer. Until my sister Pam pressed the book Bunny into my hands, saying “So weird!” I had never even heard of Awad before. I should have, though, as she is amazingly talented–so talented, in fact, that Margaret Atwood has named her her “Literary Heir Apparent.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/20/t-magazine/margaret-atwood-mona-awad.html).

There is an interesting, slightly odd photo of the two of them that accompanies the New York Times article. In it, renowned Canadian author Atwood sits behind Awad, her right hand resting possessively on Awad’s right arm, claiming her as her own, and her left hand on Awad’s right shoulder, as if she is presenting her to the world. Having read the books of both authors, I can definitely see an affinity between the two. Both Canadian authors write dark, subversive, oftentimes disturbing novels that cast a critical light on our world and culture, particularly from a woman’s point of view. 

In Rouge, published in 2023, Awad explores the fraught relationship between a young woman named Belle, and her Mother (with a capital “M”). We learn at the beginning of the book that Belle’s incredibly beautiful, aspiring actress mother has died in a mysterious manner–she’s fallen off a cliff into the rocky waters of California. Belle travels from Montreal, where she lives, to California to attend her mother’s funeral and to go through her things, but once she enters her mother’s apartment it’s almost like she falls under a strange spell, surrounded by her mother’s things: the cracked mirrors everywhere, the red bottles of skincare potions, the glamorous dresses and shoes. One evening, not even knowing why, Belle puts on a silky silver dress of her mother’s and her mother’s “sex shoes,” the red heels with the red feathers on the toe, and begins walking along the coast. She ends up at the front door of an imposing mansion, which Awad describes in the voice of Belle: 

“There’s a house I’ve never seen before on the very edge of the cliff. All curved glass and extravagant geometry. Black polished concrete that shines in the dark. What I really notice is the red light. Glowing from the dramatically contoured floor-to-ceiling windows. I’m heading for this house like I was heading there all along.” (66) 

Belle is welcomed in only to discover that the house is filled with beautiful people–and, really, not just beautiful people, but flawless people. People with perfect, glowing skin; perfectly thin bodies; and elegant suits and dresses in red, black, and white. 

This is the part of the novel that reminded me so much of the scene in Death Becomes Her (a dark comedy that came out in 1992) where Meryl Streep’s character Madeline Ashton shows up at the home of Lisle Von Rhuman, played by the incomparable Isabella Rossellini, seeking a secret anti-aging serum. In both this film and Awad’s novel, the female characters are obsessed with staying young- and beautiful-looking, and they’ll do whatever it takes to hold onto it. And we most definitely see this obsession with beauty in our culture: movie stars and celebrities like Oprah jumping on the Ozempic bandwagon in their desperate desire to be thin, despite not really knowing the long-term consequences of the drug. Aging actresses going back for more and more plastic surgery to try to hold onto their beauty, when what they’re really doing is permanently disfiguring themselves, turning their faces into plastic forms that don’t even look human anymore. It’s sad that physical looks, rather than intelligence or financial success, are the only “currency” for so many women today and that there is such pressure on women to fit society’s standards of beauty. 

Belle’s mother is a fan of classic films starring screen sirens, and the mother in Awad’s novel 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl shares this quality, papering her daughter’s walls with images of Audrey Hepburn, Jayne Mansfield, and Marilyn Monroe. What could be more damaging to a young teen coming into her own womanhood than to be surrounded by images of these “perfect” Hollywood-ified women? And it’s not a man/patriarchy who has put these posters up in her room–it is her own mother!

This is definitely one of the conflicts that comes up in the novel: as much as Belle loves her mother, she is constantly comparing herself to her beautiful red-haired, blue-eyed, white-skinned Caucasian mother, and feels she’s always falling short. Her resentment and/or jealousy comes out in the following passage: 

“I thought of Mother’s many robes from Egypt. How sometimes she’d line her eyes like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. Wear a blue beetle on her wrist, a scarab. She didn’t steal any of it. Father bought it all for her. From Egypt. Mother would say of the jewels and robes. So why was it that when I watched the beetle wink against her light skin, I sometimes thought liar, I sometimes thought thief? Because she was Noelle Nour with creditors only. I’m Mirabelle Nour, no matter what I wear, no matter where I go. Can’t take it off like Mother’s wrist beetle.” (211-212). 

Belle envies the fact that her mother can put on and take off her Egyptian-ness, while this is something that Belle, with her inherited olive skin and dark hair, can’t do. Interestingly, though, Belle’s mother is jealous of Belle’s olive skin because it won’t wrinkle the way her (pale, white) skin, will. Theirs is a competitive and very complicated relationship, but the love between them cannot be denied. One passage in chapter 31, written in Mother’s voice, was quite moving to me. Belle’s mother seemed to realize her own brokenness and voices how she doesn’t want to pass on that brokenness to her daughter. 

This novel is full of so much: wonderful allusions to fairytales such as Snow White and Beauty and the Beast; incisive social commentary; beautiful, if sometimes gruesome, descriptions; and even a Tom Cruise lookalike-demon named Seth (yes, you read that correctly). Awad has a crazy, dark imagination that some people call "weird" or "insane," but personally I like it, and I can't wait to read more of her books.

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