‘Youthjuice’ gives the skincare industry a macabre makeover

Sathue (a pseudonym for the author Erin Mayer) grabs readers by the throat in her first sentences: “We bathed in their blood to stay young. Slick, fatty liquid kept us alight in our wild beauty. Their blood was the fountain of youth…”

Bathing in blood to attain perpetual beauty is the goal of HEBE, a SoHo startup skincare and wellness company named after the Greek goddess of youth, and where protagonist Sophia Bannion, 29, toils away as a copywriter. Sophia is smart and charming, her life mirroring that of recent J-school grads writing for Elle or Allure or new product bards at Olay or Kiehl’s. She is anxious though, and the author adroitly captures her disquiet through her nail-biting habit. She wears gloves to cover up her mangled appendages.

The novel’s other characters are shallow, running around SoHo sipping matchas and taking hits of “anti-inflammatory turmeric root” from their vape pens. Some are sociopathic — the author reveals their traits slowly and flawlessly.

Readers will marvel at Tree Whitestone, the mysterious and demanding HEBE CEO who is obsessed with HEBE’s interns. Tree works through the night sipping nightcaps and hosting meetings at her chic East Village apartment: “(Tree) is breathtaking. Her white hair and geometric eyeliner, the ceramic tone of her skin, the backless dress” convey her sophisticated appearance. She is also generous, a trait revealed to readers when she offers Sophia youthjuice, which removes the scars on Sophia’s fingers and helps her stop biting her fingernails.

The prickly Marigold, Tree’s college classmate and assistant, is a character archetype who follows her CEO around faithfully. Readers also meet Dominique – Sophia’s well-heeled, pill-popping roommate who pays the rent and writes a blog MAKEUPSEX when she is not high or attending parties. Mona, Sophia’s fragile childhood friend, is revealed in flashback chapters, which are braided with themes of identity, addiction and betrayal.

The magical Manhattan setting in “Youthjuice” embodies privilege and ambition. Sathue situates readers in trendy bars where worker bees imbibe cocktails named after yoga poses (Namaste and Downward Dog), inside East Village apartments for impromptu meetings, and to chic yoga studios for hot yoga sessions.

Sathue is not afraid to shock her readers through eerie sequences. In one such episode, we move shoulder to shoulder with Sophia at a product launch party where she meets Jason Red, a former party promoter who killed his PCP dealer: “Even now he’s aggressively handsome beneath a mask of glitter and white face paint, with a dimpled smile and sly eyes. He ambles like a maddened ringleader, a manic grin cleaving his face.”

We constantly drift through HEBE’s headquarters with Tree’s coterie, going inside “The Ovaries, a pair of egg-shaped conference rooms” where HEBE employees jockey for promotions, work on new product launches, plan photo shoots and organize their next happy hour. But the plot explodes when Sophia goes to the CEO’s apartment for a meeting. When she encounters Tree, she suddenly identifies the secret ingredient of youthjuice.

Sophia is an unreliable narrator, and through her, Sathue keeps the reader off-balance, making us question the authenticity of the characters and the events, blurring the lines between real and surreal. Sophia provides readers with a direct connection into her thoughts, pulling back the curtain of the mundane to reveal the macabre.

Throughout “Youthjuice,” Sathue summons fear and disbelief. She creates loathsome characters and ghastly scenarios to satirize beauty care executives and consumers. Readers witness Sophia transform from a caring 20-something into someone unrecognizable. The body horror category is a subgenre of horror and fantasy, and readers will indeed be horrified by Sathue’s creation. Sathue goes for the jugular, possibly convincing us all to concentrate on self-esteem not self-aggrandizement.

Wayne Catan is an English teacher at Brophy College Preparatory in Arizona and Head Wrestling Coach.

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