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Lately I've freed up a bit more leisure time and a trip to the library and a push or two from member RottenPumpkins led me to borrowing Stephen King's Rose Madder. The gap from reading novels has I think enabled me to look at King with fresh eyes and without my earlier disappointment.
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Advantages: Interesting Disadvantages: Mixing the supernatural with what could have been a good thriller didn't work well.
...me to borrowing Stephen King's Rose Madder. The gap from reading novels has I think enabled me to look at King with fresh eyes and without my earlier disappointment.
King builds up feeling for the main characters in the short first chapter well. We have the husband Norman, a policeman and a total monster calling an ambulance for his downtrodden wife Rose who is cowering in the corner suffering a miscarriage after a brutal beating and ... ...to feel anger at Norman, Rose I felt desperately sorry for and wanted to see her fight back. You wonder why she has silently suffered brutal treatment from Norman for 14 years without even putting some ground up glass in his meals or on his toothbrush, but then you know from life and Kings words that frightened women like Rose become so undermined and demoralised that they just let it happen and brutality becomes an unpleasantly normal way of life. more
Throughout the eighties I was a massive Stephen King fan and loved his earlier novels. During the nineties his style seemed to change, his plots became harder to understand, his writing didn't flow as well and I found it harder to get into what I expected to be good reads.
Disappointed, I transferred my affection to Dean Koontz whose work reminded me of the earlier atmospheric, spine chilling and easy to read King novels. During the last few years I haven't had much time for reading, a pity because for many years I was in the habit of reading one or more book every week and it was one of my favourite ways to relax.
Lately I've freed up a bit more leisure time and a trip to the library and a push or two from member RottenPumpkins led me to borrowing Stephen King's Rose Madder. The gap from reading novels has I think enabled me to look at King with fresh eyes and without my earlier disappointment.
King builds up feeling for the main characters in the short first chapter well. We have the husband Norman, a policeman and a total monster calling an ambulance for his downtrodden wife Rose who is cowering in the corner suffering a miscarriage after a brutal beating and not for the first time. All because he wasn't happy with her reading a light hearted novel. His callousness is apparent as he leaves her crumpled in pain to make a sandwich for himself while humming ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’ before bothering to call an ambulance.
While I was made to feel anger at Norman, Rose I felt desperately sorry for and wanted to see her fight back. You wonder why she has silently suffered brutal treatment from Norman for 14 years without even putting some ground up glass in his meals or on his toothbrush, but then you know from life and Kings words that frightened women like Rose become so undermined and demoralised that they just let it happen and brutality becomes an unpleasantly normal way of life.
Years later, another beating and a drop of blood on her bedding changes all that. Rose walks out of the house with only her husband’s credit card and starts a new life 550 miles away. I’m not sure how true to life that bit is. If that was me I would have bunged some clothes into a suitcase and any items that could be sold to help me to get as far away from the beast as possible, but then I haven’t lived the life of the Roses of this world.
Although only used once for a withdrawal of $350, the credit card is the means that King introduced for Norman to start to trace Rose. Throughout the book we are given more clues to Norman’s beastlike character, all helping to create a healthy disgust in the man. We find out that he is a murderer and that he likes biting his victims, he hates women and you know that if he asks anybody to come up close because he wants to talk to them he will do a lot more than that.
Three coincidences made the story less believable for me. A visit to a pawn shop finds Rose a fit man to fall in love with, a job recording talking books that pays mega bucks, and a weird picture of a woman with Rose Madder written on the back. Ok you can understand the introduction of a man who may or may not turn out to be a knight in shining armour. Rose needed a job to pay her way but it would have been more realistic for somebody who is trying to hide from a cop who has the resources to trace her to trawl cafes and restaurants looking for cash in hand and anonymity. The addition of the picture and trying to turn what could have been a damned good thriller into a horror story was unnecessary for me and I almost stopped reading at that point.
It’s hard writing this without giving too much of the story away but my favourite bit, Norman’s encounter with Gert had me cheering her on and feeling violent towards the man. During one of Norman’s attempts to find Rose he attacks a young woman behind some toilets in a park. Gert, a very large woman who teaches self-defence has a go and woops him. She ends up sitting on him and leaving a message for Rose - whose kidneys he has punched many times and damaged - by peeing on his face. Norman escapes to carry on his search by wearing a rubber bull mask, trapping the smell of pee and reminding him of the message.
Norman quickly gets dottier and talks to the mask. He believes that the mask is talking back to him and helping him with the search that leaves a few more gruesomely treated victims behind. Those bits seemed a bit silly but I guess that they were included to show readers just how dangerously nutty Norman was becoming.
CONCLUSION
I enjoyed reading Rose Madder but I found Roses character a bit bland throughout most of the book. King doesn’t give much insight into her and I would have liked to see him enlarge on her feelings and thoughts more to help me to build up more of an empathy with the character apart from pity.
There was little of the suspense that I would have expected from Kings novels and I felt a little disappointed that more advantage hadn’t been taken of Normans ‘moments’. Most of those were blanked out or glossed over by Norman having blank spells.
As I thought half way through, the inclusion of the picture and a hint at the supernatural was unnecessary and didn’t do the book any favours. I felt like skipping those parts because they just added tosh to what would have been a very good read without them.
The book wasn’t frightening in the horror sense that I like, but it is frightening to think that men like Norman may exist in the real world. My favourite line from the book comes when Rose is trying to believe that she might have a chance for a new life …
if there could actually be a real life where real people walked out of their prisons, turned right … and walked into heaven.
I'm glad that I read Rose Madder and will almost certainly read some of the Stephen King books that I've missed, maybe even re-read some of the ones that I enjoyed years ago.
Advantages: Well paced tale with a woman hero for a change! Disadvantages: The switch from thriller to fantasy/horror is a bit hit and miss.
...not trying anything new.
Rose Madder is another digression from the horror genre for King as it is not a traditional thriller/schlock horror book to which many associate King with.
Told in the first person our story follows a woman called Rose Daniel’s. After several years of physical and mental abuse from her husband Norman (a highly respected policeman) she finally snaps after losing her baby due to yet another severe beating. Running away with ... ...Rose tries to find a new life for herself in another town. Will she succeed or will Norman track her down and punish her for daring to defy him?
This is an intriguing story in that Rose appears as such a weak character at first and as a reader it is initially difficult to find sympathy with her plight. Why does she not just leave? She has no family or friends so what keeps her there?
However, the more you read the more you become to admire Rose. ...
dididave 23.06.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Rose Madder - Stephen King
...knows no bounds. Married to Rose a repressed, suppressed woman, feeble by years of limiting, childhood upbringing by a mother who’s ideas where old-fashioned and limiting: thus instilling in Rose a deep belief in her worthlessness. Together this bizarre couple lived a marriage made in hell. The timid fearful Rose grew increasingly more frightened of Norman as he became more and more twisted with cruelty. Norman’s own childhood at the hands of his ... ...who would target Rose as his symbolic punch bag victim.
Norman is clearly mad as we are shown by his reaction to beating rose so badly that she miscarried of their child. Exhibiting no emotion, Norman first makes a sandwich, which he eats as he calls 911 for an ambulance for Rose. Just As Norman swallows his food; Rose learns to swallow the pain of his brutal beatings.
Fast forward several years and Rose wises up and runs for her life, making the ...
icklebet 15.05.2007
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Rose Madder - Stephen King
Advantages: good story and interesting characters Disadvantages: the ending
...who runs the shelter which Rose eventually finds. The people she works with the contracts she is offered and the man she starts her new life with. A riveting read which will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Although the ending was rather a let down, it went on to describe Roses wedding the birth of her children.
I don’t feel there is much more can be said without ruining the story but I do guarantee it a worth while read to ...
bronwyn91 23.10.2002
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Rose Madder - Stephen King
Advantages: Gripping page turner Disadvantages: difficulty in suspension of disbelief between real and supernatural
...and buys a painting called Rose Madder which seems to find her rather than the other way around.
The painting starts the beginning of the supernatural element of the novel. The picture begins to change and, whilst it is weird and wonderful and takes us into a different almost Narnia-like world, it doesn't really work all that well against the severity and reality of the abusive element of the novel. Having said that, it does have a fascintaing fairy-tale ... ...incredibly surprising as a result.
I really enjoyed this book as it was escapism in the extreme and effortless to read. It also made a change from the bog standard tales where the husband plays the villain and the wife the weak victim. Norman is terrifying, but not in a very conventional sense and the fact that there is a chase through the majority of the novel keeps the pace gripping and renders you unable to put it down. It's a daring task to ...
Tadders 21.07.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Rose Madder - Stephen King
Advantages: Very good storyline with a good twist Disadvantages: n/a
...revolves around a woman named Rose who, after suffering awful abuse from her husband, decides one day to run away and start again. And so she does, but is terrified that he will find her. She goes to a womens hostel, then to a home of her own and begins her new life. but of course, the husband comes after her - he is a policeman and devotes his time to tracking her down. A few murders later, and he finds her. But all is not how it seems - for a strange ... ...and escape her brutal abusive husband forever. I cannot really delve into the story much more without giving away a huge chunk of the plot. What I liked about this book was the way in which the issue of domestic violence was broached. Obviously Stephen King did a lot of research into this issue, and it was broached in a very indepth manner. I do not know whether that was intentional or not, but it was very well done.
However, I would beg you not ...
BAILEY 17.05.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Rose Madder - Stephen King
Roused by a single drop of blood, Rosie Daniels wakes up to the chilling realization that her husband is going to kill her. And she takes flight. She begins to build a new life, but her husband is getting closer. About the AuthorStephen King is the bestselling author of more than thirty books of which the most recent are THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON, HEARTS IN ATLANTIS and his non-fiction book ON WRITING. He lives with his wife, the novelist Tabitha King, in Bangor, Maine.
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