Poured Over: Mona Awad on Rouge

By Jenna Seery / September 12, 2023 at 6:00 am

“… this was a book about beauty, and I wanted it to be very honest.”

In Mona Awad’s Rouge, gothic family-drama meets fairy tale (with a hint of horror) as a young woman navigates the world of youth and beauty in the aftermath of her mother’s death. Awad joins us to talk about how her obsession with skincare led to writing this book, creating a mother and daughter dynamic, the importance of writing with a distinct voice and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over. We end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Madyson.    

This episode of Poured Over was produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.          
   
New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.       

Featured Books (Episode):
Rouge by Mona Awad
Bunny by Mona Awad
13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl by Mona Awad
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):
Maeve Fly by CJ Leede
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

Full Episode Transcript
Miwa Messer
I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Mona Awad is the author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl and Bunny and All’s Well and there’s a new novel called Rouge. And if you’ve read Mona before, you know you’re in for something that’s really kind of a treat. I’m very much looking forward to having this conversation with you. And if you haven’t, well, I hope you’ll stick around because we’re going to have a really interesting conversation about beauty and a lot of other things. But anyway, Mona, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over.

Mona Awad
My gosh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you so much.

When did you start writing Rouge because I feel like you know, Belle, we’ve seen echoes of Belle in earlier narrators.

Yes. Yeah, no, definitely. I started working on Rouge when I was touring for Bunny, just my second book, and I just became really addicted to skincare videos on the internet. I couldn’t stop watching them. And it felt really dark. Just felt like I had to unpack that, you know.

I get it. But also book tours. I think there’s this perception that book tours are kind of, you know, glamorous, fun things where you swan around in fancy clothes, and meet, you know, hundreds and 1000s of readers all the time. And the reality of book tours is sometimes you’re looking for a pretzel in your pocket. And you’re just like, great. Having been a publicist, running around with authors on tour and having produced events for B&N. Like sometimes really, you’re just excited if you can grab like a bag of potato chips somewhere before you have to talk to people because it’s, I can, I can see watching a lot of skincare.

Yeah, I was watching so many I couldn’t stop and I got really on that tour. And then at home later, I just started buying all these products that I couldn’t afford, and that I didn’t understand. I didn’t even know how to apply them properly, or in what order and there’s an order. And, you know, I just that I was a total sucker for it all. And I didn’t understand it. So yeah, it was power. It was powerful. It was a powerful time.

And it also says so much. If you look at how the advertising has changed, right for skincare and everything else, it says so much to about how we’re aging and not aging and how we’re not willing to act our age or look our age. And it’s wild to me, because I mean, listen, I have plenty of fancy things, some of which I really like, and some of which I laugh when I see it. Like yeah, was it not thinking, and we all do it. But it’s really kind of fraught territory and a lot of ways, right? Like, there’s some stuff where I’m okay. I spend a lot of time on planes I believe in waste drives are now and sunscreen has always been a thing. And it’s wild that those words even come out of my mouth.

I know. I know. I know. I’ve really discovered sun care very, very recently. Like so now I’m really really into it. And that might be the thing that stuck out of out of everything that I kind of subjected myself to while I was working on earth that sunscreen has stuck because it’s good stuff. You can’t argue with it.

It’s true. It’s totally true. But part of what I love about Rouge, and for me it was a really quick read. Yeah, propulsive did not want to put it down was actually a little annoyed when I had to do things like empty the dishwasher and you know, live my life. Belle is a really intriguing woman. And again, there are sort of echoes of Elizabeth a little bit with sort of changes and the outsider status. And then there’s a little bit too of All’s Well, where it’s just like, you know, Belle’s pain is really that she’s grieving or mother’s dying. Grief is kind of the original, invisible wound, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. So in some ways, it makes total sense that she would be obsessed with the surface right, to just in order to cope. But maybe also in order to just to just avoid to she’s a very, in some ways a really innocent soul. Maybe in any of my other narrators.

I can see that actually. Is Belle the first character who showed up for you, or did you sort of know what you wanted to play the scope of what you wanted to play with?

Oh, that’s a great question. She was so interesting, because at first I could only see her from the outside. And normally, when I start writing a novel, The first thing that happens is I hear a voice. It’s a very, very strong voice and it’s the voice of the of the of the main character. But with Belle I saw her before I heard her So I thought that was really interesting because this is a character who has a lot of walls. She’s got a lot of shields, she’s literally covered and 5 million layers of saran. Hiding behind big sunglasses and so, so yeah, so she was kind of a mystery to me. But she definitely she was the first thing that I saw. It was her, just her moving through the world, in in a lot of denial.

And you take her out of Montreal? Yeah, we’re in very bright, very sunny San Diego, or I should say, just outside of San Diego, just a tiny bit outside of San Diego, right on the beach. You physically put her in a place where she would not have chosen to be and this is her mother’s apartment.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. It’s, it’s a really fraught place for her. It’s right on the edge of the literal abyss, the ocean, the first mirror? And yeah, it’s really haunted territory for her she is she is not someone who enjoys the sun. She has learned from her mother to love and fear the sun. So, so yeah, for her San Diego. It’s the beginning of a gothic story.

A very sunny sunshine, a gothic story, which is part of the fun of Rouge. It really is, I mean, the things that you do. And the thing that the things that Belle decides to do, but also the stories she tells us about her past. I mean, she and her mother didn’t have the easiest relationship. You build in some fairy tale narrative. I mean, there’s do we call it a haunted mirror?

Yeah, no, we definitely. I mean, that is the thing about Snow White, and the start is definitely playing with Snow White. It’s a Snow White story at its core. I love that about Snow White. I love that mystery between the mother and the mirror and who is really speaking, is there really something there in the glass? Or is it just her shadow self talking to her? I really wanted to have fun with that in this book.

I also had a moment to where I was, like, how much of the Beauty and the Beast is going to be I mean, obviously, with Belle and her name, I was just kind of like, well, there’s little bit of this, as well. And it’s sort of that tumbly mix of fairy tales, as we were sort of told them. And then the reality and if you’ve ever read the annex brocaded fairy tales, they were really tools to make sure people behaved. Yes, made specific kinds of choices that really ruthless and quite gross actually.

Yeah, no, they really, really are. I mean, that original Beauty and the Beast is like, it’s a basically a book on how to be, you know, a moral young woman, you know, and move through the world in a moral way. So yeah, Beauty and the Beast is very disturbing. And definitely I was thinking about that story, too. I think I’ve loved working with fairy tales for so long, because I just love how they use fantasy to depict very, very real emotional realities that we all go through, but they use the fantastic to do that in a way that really resonates. You know, beauty is magical. So it just felt like of course, fairy tales are going to come into this book because I’m writing about the dark side of beauty.

Well, that and style because Belle’s mother, okay, there’s a pair of red shoes, a pair of red shoes that pops up every now and again. And I’m trying really not to spoil anything. But you know, obviously, if you’ve done the reading, there are references that you will immediately see and maybe your eyes will get big the way mine did. But Belle’s mother is impossibly stylish, and really has built her own life. And yet, it’s not enough. Now, it’s really not enough. And she sort of kicks off the whole thing. Well, obviously, she kicks up the whole thing by dying, but there is a backstory that Belle is going to get pulled into so did you know though that you needed Belle’s mom to make this story work because I feel like there’s kind of a generational piece that goes into the beauty and the physical. You know, the way you dress and the way you carry yourself and all of these things that you kind of need a little bit of an age gap.

Yeah, to have the contrast. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think that’s the thing about that as Snow White that’s so powerful scenario is that it’s that that psychodrama between the mother and the daughter, you know, all of this tension, all of this unspoken stuff, all of this love that all of these thorns too, right? Belle’s mother is so stylish. Noel is so stylish, and she’s such a mystery to Belle. She’s like a mess. The way that you know your mother is kind of magical and mythic to you, you know, when you’re a kid. And Noel, her mother, especially because she totally embraced the whole cult of beauty. The whole cult of style. Which Belle now, yeah, she’s inherited that longing that desire. So for her, her whole life kind of turns into that pursuit to because it was her mother’s pursuit.

And yet Belle doesn’t quite have all it takes to live that kind of life. And part of me thinks she genuinely doesn’t want it. And part of me is thinking that this is the grief really driving her to connect with her mom, because her mom has died. And she doesn’t know how to process it. Because there’s some choices she makes. You know, I think that’s the grief. I really think that’s the grief. But you do. And you’ve done this across the books, but especially in rouge, you have a way of using language to represent memory and transformation in ways that are really tricky and really smart. And propulsive, which again, you don’t always get in this kind of I mean, you’re doing a lot. Yeah, in this book. But I really do want to talk about language, because I feel like you’re one of those people who works at the sentence level. And if the sentence is not working, something happens, and whether that’s an edit or you walk away for a moment and come back. But can we talk about language and craft for a second?

Yeah, of course, of course. For me, it’s, it’s all about getting that voice, right? I just need to voice you know, in some ways, it’s very method, I have to believe that character otherwise I can’t go on that crazy journey with her. I can’t go on the wild ride if I don’t believe you know. So getting the voice right is important. And language is a huge part of that is making sure that I understand every aspect of this character’s consciousness. And this is a character who’s you know, she’s, like all of us, she’s buried a lot of stuff that she is living with. It’s informing the way that she talks to people the way that she interfaces, but she doesn’t know that. But I had to find ways to show in the language that that’s happening. So that the reader knows the reader has a bit of a clue. And is maybe a little a little worried for her as they should be.

Oh, no definitely was worried for her but also really liked puzzling out. Because for instance, there’s a handyman who worked for her mom, who I was very suspicious of it first, I have to say I really, I was kind of like this. This is not gonna be Tad, I do not like you. I don’t know why you’re here. This is weird.

He’s hot though. Yeah, well, and hot is good.

But it’s all good. But I still I had a moment of… and yet, we do see the evolution, not just about his relationship, but also sort of his relationship with her mom and his relationship with the world around him. And I don’t think I’m really spoiling anything by saying it because it’s made pretty clear pretty quickly that my suspicious take on the dude in the living room. Yeah, the fact not right. But I do love puzzling that out and sort of connecting bells interpretation of things to his or when Belle is telling her story. Yeah. of her childhood when and sort of piecing it together. And, and comparing it. Yeah, people have said to Belle, because she’s really complicated. But she misses a lot, I think is, you know, she misses a lot. And everyone’s unreliable. Yeah, anyone has an oracle of wisdom that Belle isn’t, but she’s unreliable in a way that made me really need to know how this was all going.

Yeah, yeah. It was interesting for me, because, you know, in, in previous novels, and all as well, in Bunny, even in 13Ways there’s a character who’s usually functioning in some ways to sort of clue the narrator in signal, hey, the way that you’re seeing the world, it may not be exactly the way that the world is, you know, but I really wanted to make Belle more alone because she is at a very fundamental level. This is a character who’s very isolated, which is why she’s so vulnerable to this cult. And to the whole the whole proposition of beauty. She’s more vulnerable because she is so isolated. So these characters in her world that she’s encountering, like her boyfriend and you know, the new dress shop owner, you know, a dress shop and now there’s a new owner. They’re actually she perceives them as threats. You know and whether they are or not well, the readers not sure because the reader is only looking at this world through Belle’s eyes. And it’s a world where everybody is a little bit of a threat.

This setting. I mean, anyone who’s read Bunny knows that there’s a cinematic feel to Bunny that’s that goes back to you know, Heathers and The Craft and movies like that Tom Cruise, a little bit of a roll. Yeah, Rouge, and I’m laughing about it, because when I realized what you were doing, and also you kept calling out the snaggletooth was very funny, Tom Cruise’s role, but also, there’s a little bit of Eyes Wide Shut to which I did see in the movie theater. And I can’t tell you a single, like, I remember none of it. And I do remember being a little bored, which says more about me than the film at Kubrick fans, please, that says way more about me than the movie. But I was laughing when I realized what you were putting together. And I’m just wondering if we can talk about some of the pop culture influences that also flow into this book outside of the YouTube skincare videos. And yeah, I mean, Tom Cruise.

I feel like you you need to be in the right mood for a Kubrick film like it’s you just need to be in the mood and Eyes Wide Shut is in many ways it’s an ask, you know, ask of its viewer it definitely did informers just in terms of the mood that the atmospheric that the cultiness of it, of course, and the Tom Cruise, of course, because I knew very, very early on, Tom Cruise was kind of an instinctive choice that I made. I knew he was going to play a big role in the book before I even understood why. And it was only later that I understood just how perfect it was. I don’t think this is too much of a giveaway. The 80s plays a bit of a role because we so does, so we do revisit the narrator’s childhood, your childhood is in the 80s the surface obsessed 80s and both she and her mother worships cinema, you know, the movies are like another kind of mirror to these beauty obsessed men. And who better to be emblematic of a kind of cinematic beauty than Tom Cruise at the time. And I love I love that his last name is Cruise, and that there’s just so much water in the book, of course. so it all kind of seemed, seemed to work. And you know, she becomes obsessed with the movies. Movies are worthy of such obsession. I love the movies, too. I had a crush on Tom Cruise when I was a kid. So it’s a bit of a bit of a tribute to that maybe he was one of those instinctive choices. It just turned out to just work so perfectly for the novel that it was actually almost frightening. Like it was almost frightening just how perfect he ended up being for the book. And I love, I love the tooth.

I knew we were in for something a little different, partially because of the tooth. It’s a weird detail to pull out. Right? Like, it’s a fun detail. But it’s a weird detail. I was like, okay, yes, we have the beauty. Yes, we have the charisma, yes, we have all of the parts, but we’re not going to lose sight of the fact that we need all of the parts to make this work. And that includes the snaggletooth.

That’s exactly right. And, and you know, the music is so perfect. I listened to a lot of it when I was working. When I was working on the book. I mean, I have to say like the last 100 pages are almost entirely written to The Dream is Always the Same. It was on constant repeat from Risky Business. So it completely like infuses the whole world of Rouge. And it just makes sense.

I mean, you could also argue to that the 80s are sort of the starting point of the moment. We were like they are actually genuinely the starting point for the moment we’re in now. Yeah, and that all of the work that had come before sort of got blown up in a moment where suddenly it was, you know, cell phones the size of a brick, hadn’t, you know, yuppies and all of these things. And suddenly, we had, you know, American Psycho. And, you know, it really like oh, look at where we are right now. There is a direct line right back to the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. And like where we’ve gone and what we’ve become and this sort of warped, yes, hold that sort of celebrity and surface appearances have for us now. Yeah, all starts in 1980. Really wild to me.

It’s crazy. And it’s so amazing that you reference that book, because Tom Cruise is in that novel, too. Yeah, he’s in the elevator with Patrick Bateman. That book is really important to me, it was important 13 Ways it continues to be an important novel for me. And, and when I when I, when I read that I was just like, oh, man, that’s kind of amazing.

And also Jean Rhys. Right. So we’ve talked about Jean Rhys and her narrators who, Oh, you want to talk about some women who’ve had a rough go of things. Oh my gosh, yeah, just to take a breather in between, like I had, at one point, I did sort of re read everything in one go and buy one get probably over a couple of months. And her novels are very short. And of course you start with Sargasso Sea. But After Leaving Mr. McKenzie, and like their quartet, there’s some stuff in there where you’re like, I need to breathe, I need to go have a snack and walk around the block. And they’re beautiful, but they’re devastating.

They’re devastating.

Oh, relentless too. A little like, because her characters don’t. They don’t know what they don’t know. I know. And, you know, as the reader, you’re sitting there going, please, please just turn to the left, turn to the left.

They’re not gonna turn ever. Yeah, she was a huge, huge influence for me. I mean, really one of those novelists that you read and you’re just like, oh, okay, this is this. This is the space I love, you know, as a reader where I feel like somebody is just whispering like a really intimate, dangerous secret about themselves. You know, I love that kind of intimacy. And, and, yeah, I mean, she was on my mind a lot. Her and her narrators were on my mind a lot when I was thinking about her narrators are often very vulnerable to the things that they’ll is vulnerable to and enchanted by like clothing. Like beauty, the surface but of course they’re drowning inside, you know?

Yeah, they’re also not mean in the way like a Muriel Spark narrator can be sometimes and Muriel Spark reader for different reasons. But there are times where her people are just mean, like, I can’t, what am I holding on to you here? I mean, as devastating as Rhys can be. You stay for the language you stay for the overwhelming emotion like all of these people who’ve read A Little Life. I’m like, well, there’s also this woman called Jane Rhys. Yeah, want to have all of the feels. Yeah, all of the feels and more, especially when you read her in like your 20s. And you’re just like, oh, my gosh, that’s when I read her. Yeah, that’s when I read her for the first time. And she holds up. Yeah, different way. There’s some authors that I read when I was in my sort of teens and 20s that I really loved. And now I go back, and I’m like, yep, not aging. Well, not. Don’t need to hold on to that, that someone else can love that book.

Yeah, no, it’s so true. You know, and when I revisit her, I have to say for me, she stays and it’s one of the reasons why is because it’s, it’s not perfect. It’s not sealed, like it’s very raw, actually. And so it feels it still feels alive.

Really wildly ahead of her time, sort of the way Jane Bowles and Virginia Woolf were. The way they were not just using language, but the things that they were willing to put out publicly. I mean, Rhys was writing at a moment where what she was doing would have been considered, like outrageously raw, just too public, just too public and too messy, and all of the things that now like people put more on the internet now than Jean Rhys ever put into it.

Yeah, no, it’s embarrassing like that. Like her, her narrator’s confessed to things that are very embarrassing. Yeah, but that’s why I love them.

Yeah. I love the idea that Belle is a direct descendent.

Yeah, she was. I was revisiting After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie, and Good Morning, Midnight when I was oh, yeah.

Yeah. Thinking about that.

I know. I know. I think that that that narrator I believe I might be mistaken. But I believe she works in a dress shop.

So I think you were absolutely right. And the idea to though that somehow femininity could save Belle’s, mother. Yeah, that sort of pops through both the backstory and the and the glances that we get through Sylvie, her business partner or a new dress shop owner, it feels hard for her. Yeah. And that, you know, she’s caught up in this idea that if she doesn’t present herself a certain way, she won’t find love. She won’t find a job. She won’t be able to do her thing, but none of that defines her motherhood or being a mother for her. It’s all about the outside.

Yeah, yeah. She’s got her own cracked mirror in the closet. Yeah, I mean, I think I think it’s so true. I mean, her, her relationship to Belle is so it’s so fraught, because, you know, she is also white and her daughter’s mixed race, right. And I think she feels like she wants she wants her daughter to feel comfortable in her own skin. But there’s only so, so much she can do to, I think, really occupy that skin with empathy, because she really, really isn’t her experience. You know, and she is so wrapped up in her own surface as much as she intends, I think good things for her daughter. She, it doesn’t always it doesn’t always go that way.

Her hearts in the right place, but at the same time, she does really think that the right dress will fix everything that yeah, like just brush your hair sweetheart, brush your hair, you’ll be fine. It’s like, well, actually, you gave me a hairbrush that won’t even go through my hair. Yeah, no, it’s true. Wow, that it’s little moments like that. And you can be as well intentioned as you want to be. But yeah, she genuinely there are moments where she really does not understand her child, doesn’t understand what her child needs. And it really, I’m trying to think of the name of the author. But there was a memoir year and years ago called Mommy Dressing. Yeah. And it. I mean, and tiny. I mean, tiny word count, tiny trim, possibly out of print now. But it was a similar thing. It was this woman’s mom, I think was at one of the women’s magazine, magazines back in the day kind of thing like in the heyday in the 50s and 60s where, you know, that was a thing, right? And the whole larger than life, mom, and like watching her get ready to go to parties, which you know, pretty much happened every night because of what she did. And yeah, it’s really trippy. And the author was older when she wrote it too, she I think she was in her 60s, when she finally like it took her that long to say, finally, she written other books like this was not her first dance. And now I’m thinking I should go back and look for it. But it is that terrain, right. Like our mothers.

Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s it. That’s why I wanted to write the book, really. I mean, I, I feel like that Snow White story is like if it was all this time, but occupying it from the kid’s perspective, and looking at a mother more magically and as a threat is just it’s so interesting. And I think it’s also something that is so universal, it’s like the other side of the same coin as the Snow White story, right. So it was really, really important to me to kind of occupy the perspective of a child and revisit that incredibly charged mysterious dynamic between the mother, of the mirror and the daughter really instrumental in pitting the two of them against each other. You know, I just think that mirror character is so fascinating and Snow White. So I had a lot of fun with my mirror character in Rouge.

It feels like you had a lot of fun in general. I mean, even though we’ve been talking about, you know, grief and aging and memory loss and transformation, and lots of things that aren’t necessarily the most comfortable things for reader or writer, but it does seem like there’s a really fantastic sense of play on the page, and whether it’s pulling from, you know, the 80s wildness or the characters or whatnot. And again, I other people may not have the immediate response I had to Tad.

Yeah, no, I know about glad you had that.

Other people may be happy to see Tad. I just was very suspicious.

As you should be. Yeah. That was that was very intentional.

Very, I’m very suspicious of Sylvie too I mean, yeah, but all of the characters ultimately do get their own arcs. Yeah. And I will say the ending is fantastic. I really didn’t know because it could have gone a million different ways. Or at least two or three, and the ending delivers. I’m smiling as I think about it, it’s really good. And it fits perfectly. So when you’re mapping this out, though, you’ve got all of the influences. You’ve got Belle’s voice, you’ve got the other voices of the other characters. Yeah. But how are we mapping out story as well, because a lot happens, a lot.

And now, it’s really interesting. I mean, I knew I was going to only have a handful of weeks to draft it. And so and that was over winter break between semesters because I teach. And so I went away to Provincetown by the ocean, the Atlantic and I stayed at a motel and just plotted out the first chunk of it, just kind of thought about the story just in broad, broad strokes. And that’s all I took with me to La Jolla where I wrote it in five weeks. And I have to say, the last 100 pages, just I wrote them in just a fever dream. The story once I once I knew the first, third, the rest of it just kind of unfurled very organically, because all of the components of it lead you to the end. And I will say this, this always happens for me with a novel. I know it doesn’t happen for everybody. But I always I see the last image usually.

Okay, yeah. Okay, that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. But five weeks, I mean, that’s, that’s a lot.

Yeah, I might wait. I know. I know. It was exhilarating. Like, it was really truly one of the greatest creative experiences I’ve ever had. Not all of them are like that. But it was just, it was so and, and I was I was really inside it. Like, I mean, I was listening to The Dream is Always the Same pretty constantly, you know? Yeah. And just smelling the roses going down the way of roses, you know, by the ocean with a sunset. And it’s all there. It’s all in Rouge.

You know, there’s that State Park, the beach, this state park at La Jolla. Yeah, I just that popped into my head when you said you were riding in La Jolla. I was like, Oh, yeah. Okay. Um, wow. Okay, now I can see the terrain even a little better than I could before.

Pretty amazing. I mean, every sunset was like, you know, roses and Tom Cruise, it was really exhilarating.

So you’ve got the sense of play, you’ve got the boat, you’ve got all of the elements, essentially. But how much of that five weeks? It sounds like a lot of it was straight up muse, straight up call it flow, call it whatever you want it just all of the pieces were there. But doesn’t it take discipline to know that this is actually the way it should be working? And it’s not just chaos on the page?

Yeah, yeah, it takes a lot of giving permission of staying seated as well. And just like working seven hours at a stretch, which I did do so that I can get to be I just wanted to get to the end of the story before I left. Before I got on the plane back to the dark north. So yeah, it just I just gave myself permission. It didn’t have to be perfect. I just needed to kind of get the, you know, the bones of the story down. And then yeah, just trust to trust that I was going in the right direction. And what’s really voice, it’s voice, believing in your voice is so key to that kind of trust. And that kind of just, I’m going to just go with this idea that I have, I’m gonna really have space and time. And once I had Belle’s voice and her childhood voice came to me so easily, right? Knew it right away. A kid voice is great, because, you know, kids, you can see their emotions right away. I mean, she was just so much more raw and honest, as a child. As an adult, she’s hiding behind all of these walls.

Good voice is also technically difficult. I mean, I think any one of us has encountered a novel where you get a kid who sounds like a 40-year-old. Hi, hello. Hello tiny person who would never exist in real life. Because seven seconds around a child you know that? No? Yeah, that’s no, they don’t actually want to be pretend adults. They super do not.

No, I know. That’s again. Yeah, it’s an exercise and you’ve got to be kind of ruthless. You have to. That’s always my key to language is just like, it doesn’t sound real to me. Does it? Do I believe it? Do I believe this voice?

So how much of the writing is the rewriting them for you? I mean, you said you got the bones out in five, I mean, five weeks, even seven hours at a stretch. Five weeks is not really long time.

I know. I know. I had plotted it. And I had it cooking kind of in the back of my head for a few months. I took the plane and went out there and just did it. But in terms of revision, I mean, I do a rewrite. That’s where I add all the layers and that takes time, that that takes another like year or so where I’m doing that and I’m pretty dedicated to that too. But that drafting is so crucial so that the story just feels like it has flow because you’re right a lot does happen. You know, there are a lot of kind of moving parts in a you know, it’s got noir elements, it’s got horror elements, it’s got fairy tale. There’s this elaborate spa, you know? So yeah I wanted to get that all down, and then go in and just really add all the layers that make it feel as rich as possible.

Because the thing that I really appreciated as I was reading Rouge to is all of the elements coming together and not once was I ever taken out of the story, because suddenly, here’s a noir thing happening in the context of like, it just it all I was like, Okay, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna follow you downstairs. And it was totally worth it. Because all of the pieces came together in a way and again, yeah, it is absolutely its voice. It’s Belle’s voice, but it’s also just the overarching narratives, voice of Rouge and this world that you’ve built. And I’ve said this before, but world building should not be limited to just sort of the idea of sci fi fantasy, and that kind of like, any novel is a world that has been built. And maybe it’s people sitting around a kitchen table or you know it, it’s a world. It did not previously exist. Before someone sat down and said, hey, I’m gonna write this particular bit. And Margaret Atwood, obviously huge fan of Bunny, but also a big influence on you. I mean, you’ve been reading her since you were an adolescent. Yep. And I’ve just like, why can’t you just write the thing you want to write? I mean, clearly, this is what you’re doing. But why not just write the thing? Do we actually have to put a label on it? And sometimes I see people saying, well, literary fiction. Oh, Lord, I don’t want to read the Bible. Well, actually…

No, I know. I know. It’s true. I mean, it’s just it’s, it’s interesting, because, you know, I teach fairy tales. Definitely, Rouge touches both, Bunny touches both. And those stories do come with particular expectations. So that’s useful. Sometimes they inform each other too. I mean, there’s so many horror elements of fairy tale and there are so many fairy tale elements of horror, you know, I just feel like I, I always try with writing, I like things that are still grounded psychologically in emotion, I really need to believe that there’s something at stake in the real world, for the better. Even if they are perceiving the world in an in a kind of magical heightened way. Still needs to feel like there are real world stakes. So I always kind of just use perception as my guide, like the character’s way of seeing the world. Well, it you know, it might involve bunnies turning into boys, it might involve in Rouge, it might involve a mirror talking to you. That’s the key to making those different elements from different genres work in a single story. It’s just thinking about the character and how they see you.

There’s a moment that Belle has in the dress shop that Sylvie knows it can be read one way, right as the story elements that are happening, and in another way, it can be read as the story of a young woman who’s losing her mind because her mother’s died.

Yep, exactly. Exactly.

I just I felt for everyone in that particular section of the book, there was no good because you could see Sylvie trying to deal with the situation and completely not understanding and Belle just thinking, oh, yeah, I am. This makes perfect sense. And grief is a weird thing. Grief is not meant to be managed. It’s not meant, we just kind of work, you work your way through until you get to the other side. And that takes a million different forms for a million different people. But I love the idea that you’re keeping it grounded. And I never again, I never felt like I was being told like a shaggy dog story. Like, I figured there, we were always going to get somewhere that I wanted to be. Right, whether I was comfortable or not, I knew I wanted to be there. But the idea that we’re talking about so many different layers and levels. And yet, I was just like, Okay, I’m gonna follow you. I’m just gonna see what happens.

Oh, I love that. I’m so glad that you did. That’s kind of what I did as a writer. I’m going to follow you and I’m just going to see where you leave me and I’m going to trust and that that question of like, is it really happening? Is it in her head? Now? That’s a really, that’s that is the tension of horror, right? And, and they’re both such scary propositions if it’s all in her head. Well, yeah, she is losing her mind and that is terrifying. Or if it’s really happening, what does that say about the world? We don’t understand it’s rules anymore, right? And then what, what, what I really enjoy doing? And I think that’s the thing I love so much about horror. This book is definitely flirting with horror. It’s not it doesn’t let you have certainty like it could be. Or it could be. They’re both possible in this world. And they’re both terrifying.

It also mimics the experience of a lot of women, though. I mean, yeah, whose story gets believed? I mean, certainly, when we’re talking about physical pain, the 1000s of different interpretations that happen, are wild one to begin with. But the idea that someone living in their own body can’t actually explain or present something that they’re experienced because someone else just doesn’t believe them. And I think especially to we’re living in this moment, right post sort of the enormous initial days of COVID, right, and long COVID, and all of these things that we’re learning about ourselves and our communities and whatnot, and to have that sort of pulsing through 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girlpulsing through Bunny pulsing through All’s Well and certainly, pulsing through Rouge is kind of a trip.

Yeah, I mean, it’s one of the things, I guess, that I love writing about the most, because I always feel like, my experience of this thing is not the same as this person’s experience. And I’m always so surprised by that. And then I really feel like Jesus, like, am I capable of perceiving reality? Is there something like, I did I get this really wrong. And that’s always such a terrifying proposition. And I think it’s something that we do as women especially, but we experienced that all the time when we’re trying to advocate for ourselves, and we’re trying to report our genuine experience of something so really high. And to have that feeling of doubt, or suddenly have that feeling that your experience is being denied. diminished, not acknowledged. It’s yeah, it’s the seed of a horror of a horror novel. Absolutely. It’s the stuff of horror, but we’re living it.

What have you learned from writing your novels? I mean, is there something maybe you’ve taken from each book into the next? Or is there just what have you learned? What have you taught yourself writing these books?

Oh, my gosh, that’s a fantastic question. I have learned, be careful what you wish for. Be careful what you wish for. And it definitely feels real for every character, that what we desire. So, so much, might not necessarily be good for us. Might make us lose ourselves. What is the cost of that of that kind of desiring that kind of transformation? But I have to say in other ways, I just, you know, I haven’t I haven’t learned anything, because I am still addicted to skincare videos. Even after all time, I thought I was on the other side of it. I really did. And then I had to write a little piece about my former addiction. So I read some of the videos. And I got, I thought I was gonna look at them with such a cynical like, Oh, I’m done. I’m past this. I got sucked right in again. So I’m a sucker. I don’t I think I have to be a little bit of one to write novels anyway. I mean, I’m just I’m capable of being enchanted, learned in all that stuff. And I think that’s okay. I think that’s okay. I’ll take it.

As a reader. I’ll take it. You want to be enchanted, and then I get to read the results. I’m perfectly happy to have. I am wondering a little bit though, if this is maybe your most personal book, as well. I mean, you allude to sort of your relationship with your mom and the author’s note and there’s some details that just feel like they were borrowed from your own life. And certainly I’m not saying this is auto fiction. There are no mirrors and weird closets, and Tom Cruise’s Tom Cruise, but there are some smaller details that feel like they belong more to you in Belle, and I’m wondering what that was like, for you. I mean, it’s one thing to take big ideas right and channel them through and certainly, you’ve been living with chronic pain for a long time, but this feels different.

Yeah, this was different. It was different and it might be part of the reason why I got so so completely immersed in it. The eye of like, the first person is already so enticing. You know, on the page, you already feel like you’re i when you’re writing it, I’m sure other writers feel that way too. But that particular, I mean, the fact that she shared some similarities with me. I mean, she’s part Egyptian, she has a speaking mother, her mother doesn’t speak French to her at home. So she’s alienated from her mother’s side of the family. And she’s also alienated because she and her mother don’t have the same racial background, and it creates these just these tensions and misunderstandings. I mean, all of that is stuff that I’ve always wanted to kind of explore, you know, and I mean, I guess these things are not necessarily specific to me, but they were a part of my experience. And I know that I know that these things language, race, you know, your mother, they inform the way that you see yourself so powerfully. And they certainly they inform your idea of, of what’s beautiful, right. And this was a book about beauty, and I wanted it to be very honest. You know, and so, sometimes when you want it to be really honest, you you know, you have to you have to go to the source.

Yeah. And of course, you have classes to teach, and we’ve run long. And it was so much fun talking to you about your work Mona, thank you so much. Rouge is out. Now, if you haven’t read Bunny, if you haven’t read 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, if you haven’t read All’s Well. Those are all available in paperback. Thank you again so much for joining us.

Oh my gosh, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure.