On Saturday evening, the Edinburgh Book Festival hosted a discussion on fairy tales and the horror genre with Mona Awad and Genevieve Jagger.
Awad is the award-winning author of four novels, including 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, Bunny, and All’s Well. Her latest novel, Rouge, is a take on the Snow White narrative and follows a young woman who is addicted to skincare YouTubers and grieving the death of her mother as she becomes entranced with a cult of beauty and youth. Genevieve Jagger is a young Scottish writer and tarot reader with a background in performance art. Her debut novel Fragile Animals follows a young woman as she escapes her Catholic upbringing and meets a man who claims to be a vampire on the Isle of Bute. The dialogue was hosted by Kirsty Logan, the Scottish author of Now She is a Witch (2023).
Both novels explore themes of religious standards and beauty standards, and how these standards are internalized in young women very early in their lives. Jagger said that in some ways, Fragile Animals is a celebration of grossness and of liberation from these standards. Rouge explores how “beauty is bound up in spirituality,” as Awad put it. In our modern era, people put faith in their skincare routines and moisturizers just as one might pray to a religious deity.
Much of the evening’s conversation centered on fairy tales and the gothic. Awad is an alumna of the University of Edinburgh, having earned her master’s degree in English literature with a focus on Scottish and English fairy tales. She said the city of Edinburgh “made a real impression” on her and her writing, particularly her time studying fairy tales in the National Library of Scotland. Jagger said that she felt intrinsically inspired by the gothic architecture and atmosphere of Edinburgh and the Scottish landscape, although she admitted that Fragile Animals was more inspired by Twilight and other supernatural YA narratives than the literary genre of gothic literature.
The final portion of the event included a discussion of horror and how both novels use domestic spaces to create a sense of eeriness. Awad argued that horror is all about perception – what does the protagonist perceive to be scary? Is the threat real or imagined, and is it worse to face a ‘real’ threat or to feel that you cannot rely on your own perception in the case of an ‘imagined’ one? The protagonists of both novels are vulnerable people, and their vulnerability makes them more susceptible to horror.
The discussion concluded with Awad providing more context into her writing style and approach. She says she starts writing when she feels a sense of powerlessness. With Rouge, this feeling began when Awad herself became addicted to watching skincare content on social media. She found this addiction all-consuming and sinister. It prompted her to write a dark fairy tale about societal obsession with youth – and thus, our fear of ageing and death. Awad said writing helps her “give language” to such concerns. I look forward to seeing what both she and Jagger write next.
Image via Katherine Coble