Rogue (2023)

“Tom Cruise walks through Mother’s mirror. The mirror is like jelly. As Tom walks through, it makes a sucking sound that reminds me of squids.”

Rating: 4/5

Author: Mona Awad

Premise: Mirabelle Nour is a fashionista and skin-care nut in her 30s with severe mommy issues. Her guarded, sanitary lifestyle is upheaved when her impossibly youthful-looking mother Noelle mysteriously dies. Mirabelle is forced back her to hometown to face her demons, Noelle’s debts, and a cultish spa that seems intent on capturing Mirabelle in its net. 

Recommend: For anyone not visiting their childhood home for the weekend, and for everyone who has ever felt shit about their face. Mona Awad has an unsettling ability to bring her readers to the brink of insanity, to traumatize and convey trauma, and to wrap up on a positive note. Our protagonist is an optimistic but troubled American with French-Egyptian ancestry. She lives in a touchable fantasy world that switches between cold hard reality and an intoxicated delusion governed by jellyfish. Discourse on beauty, but particularly beauty as whiteness, is weaved into Mirabelle’s life from her earliest memories. Awad use of symbolism is recurrent and a wee bit “in your face”, but effective. Buckle up.

In the vein of: 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (Mona Awad, 2013), My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Ottessa Moshfegh, 2018), All’s Well (Mona Awad, 2021), Natural Beauty (Ling Ling Huang, 2023).

Mood: Stumbling across the demolition of your childhood home.