Rose Madder

by Stephen King

Book, 1969

Status

Available

Call number

813.54

Collection

Publication

Publisher Unknown (1969)

Description

Fiction. Horror. HTML: This is the story of Rose Daniels, "the most richly portrayed female King's ever created" (Detroit Free Press). Escape from her macabre marriage is not as easy as fleeing to a new city, picking a new name, finding a new job, and lucking out with a new man. Not with a husband like Norman....

User reviews

LibraryThing member Bookmarque
This was a difficult one for me to get through and the only way I could manage it was to skim the Norman parts. While fascinating to see the world through such a twisted and vicious perspective, it was way too much and I just couldn’t put that into my head. Incredible for King to have created
Show More
such a deviant psychopath when he himself holds such opposite views. From everything I’ve read either by him or about him, he admires, respects and genuinely likes women. He credits his mother and wife for making him the man he is today and so it must have been nauseating to create Norman in all his insane glory. So it was pretty tough going for me, but I got there in the end.

I haven’t read this since it came out in the 90s and so I’m not sure what my reaction was then or if I could stomach the Norman parts. I had a memory of Rose looking out of the picture to Norman in her apartment with him wondering where she went, but that’s not exactly right. There is a time when she (and Bill) are in the painting and he is outside of it, but he soon follows. That’s the overtly magical part of the book - that the painting contains a world governed by the mad laws of Rose Madder, vengeful goddess and mother.

The subtler magic is what happens with Rose herself, Rosie Real. Her life with Norman was unimaginable to me. I’ve never been in that situation and so don’t know how I’d react, but I really hope I wouldn’t put up with it for 14 seconds, never mind 14 years. The descriptions of his abuse were sickening, but her flight and landing at the Daughters & Sisters was really wonderful to read. Slowly, over months she healed physically and made great strides to heal mentally as well. I loved that she became an audiobook narrator. Such a fun thing to happen to her. And the painting as well as Bill’s sincere gentleness and caring did even more to help Rose come into herself and shed the constant fear and pain of her marriage.

As with all King books, there are beautiful friendships and bonds that you ache to have in real life. Characters like Gert and Pam who make everything a little brighter and a little weirder. And like he does, he destroys most of it and makes you watch. As Norman gets closer and closer to finding Rose, he does so by tripping over and abusing her new friends and support system. I couldn't even read what happened to Anna. I did read most of the fight with Gert though and wish she’d beaten him to a pulp, but at least she lived.

Norman’s end at the hands (?) of Rose Madder was great, but maybe not enough. I wanted more mental suffering especially. I wanted his view of himself, the world and the rightness of his thinking to come crashing down in a more destructive way - I wanted his psyche broken even more than his body. Men like that make me sick and I think about how lucky I am to have escaped them. My husband is wonderful and has never given me a moment of worry for my safety. Sure, the possibility is always there, but his psyche would never allow it to happen. Anyway, I can’t say that I’ll ever read this again, but the way Rose sheds the remnants of Rose Madder and lives her life with Bill was positive, if a little unsettling.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JoClare
"Rose Madder" is a great read, and one of my favorites by Stephen King. It's the stuff nightmares are made of, a terrified wife who leaves her abusive husband to begin a new life, and is on the run from Norman who isn't so "eager" to separate from Rose. Rose soon finds a job, and purchases an
Show More
unusual painting of a woman in a red dress that seems to call out to her. She finds herself traveling between two worlds, the real world and the fantastic world found within the canvas. All too soon, Norman finds Rose, and is ready to talk to her "up close".

Stephen King carefully crafts Rosie, who is brought to life through his intense descriptions of her subconscious, diving into her fears and thoughts so that we can imagine the possible consequences she will suffer later from her deranged husband Norman, who just gets maddened with rage as each little nuance of his wife's departure unfolds. This book blends just the right amount of fantasy with reality as the story builds to a rather climactic finish, as hunter becomes hunted, predator becomes prey.

In Rose Madder, Stephen King takes a very different turn and explores real humans and their emotions just as vividly as his horrific creatures have been. I recommend this book to King fans and non-King fans alike.
Show Less
LibraryThing member gbill
It was interesting to see where King would take this story of a battered woman, taking it on the run from her (very) violent husband, who is also a cop. His characters, the action, and the supernatural aspects are all over-the-top, but that’s what the genre is about, and I liked how he used
Show More
restraint in the places where he subtly points out that violence against women is horrifyingly common. It’s a page-turner that you could easily imagine being made into a movie.

Quotes:
On art that moves us:
“…it filled her eyes and her mind with the sort of clean, revelatory excitement that belongs only to the works of art that deeply move us – the song that made us cry, the story that made us see the world clearly from another’s perspective, at least for awhile, the poem that made us glad to be alive, the dance that made us forget for a few minutes that someday we will not be.”

On men:
“His sex-drive had gone on vacation, perhaps even into permanent retirement, and maybe that was just as well. The plumbing between his legs had gotten him into a lot of trouble over the years. It was a hell of a note, the sort of thing that might lead you to believe that God had more in common with Andrew Dice Clay than you maybe wanted to believe. For twelve years you didn’t notice it, and for the next fifty – or even sixty – it dragged you around behind it like some raving baldheaded Tasmanian Devil.”

And:
“…Rosie found time to wonder – not for the first time since she had come to D & S [Daughters and Sisters, a shelter] – why so many men were so unkind. What was wrong with them? Was it something that had been left out, or something nasty which had been unaccountably built in, like a bad circuit in a computer?”

On violence against women:
“She had a sudden and far from pleasant realization: she was not novelty at Portside. This man saw women like her all the time, women hiding behind dark glasses, women buying tickets to different timezones, women who looked as if they had forgotten who they were somewhere along the way, and what they thought they were doing, and why.”

And this one, which made me pause:
“She didn’t know why she had stayed with him, any more than she knew why, in the end, it had taken just a single drop of blood to transform her entire life. She only knew that the shower had been the best place in the house, dark and wet and full of steam, and that sometimes half an hour in Pooh’s Chair felt like five minutes, and that why wasn’t a question that had any meaning when you were living in hell. Hell was motiveless. The women in Therapy Circle had understood that; no one had asked her why she stayed. They knew. From their own experiences, they knew.”
Show Less
LibraryThing member asha.leu
In 'On Writing', Stephen King describes 'Rose Madder', as well as 1994's 'Insomnia', as "stiff, trying-too-hard novels". It's a critique that I can only agree with. 'Rose Madder' is certainly better than 'Insomnia', a book I have tried and failed to complete on two separate occasions, but it is
Show More
lacking that undefinable... something that usually makes King's writing so compelling.

My main problem with 'Rose Madder' is its supernatural B-plot about a magical painting connected with Greek mythology, which always feels unnecessarily tacked on to an otherwise gripping thriller about a battered wife escaping her abusive, psychopathic police officer husband.

In fact, the A-plot is so captivating and filled with suspense and paranoia that one wonders just why King felt he had to shoehorn in the surreal dreamworld of the Rose Madder painting or the bull's mask that takes over the antagonist in the book's climax. Rosie's husband is a frightening enough antagonist in his own right, and her attempts to flee and start a new life and his dogged pursuit an interesting enough plot without any added supernatural elements.

Maybe King thought the book lacked a sufficiently "Stephen King"-esque hook, or perhaps he just wanted to explore Greek mythology at the time, but either way what could have been a classic in the spirit of 'Cujo' or 'Misery' instead feels like King-by-numbers, the plot grinding to a halt and bordering on self-parody whenever Rosie goes into the painting or anything else magical enters the story.
Show Less
LibraryThing member PilgrimJess
This is certainly a book of two halves for me. The first 300 pages were very powerful, in fact the first three chapters are for me some of the very best I have ever read,but the latter 300 were less so seeming to rather peter out.

The opening chapters details Rosie's abuse at the hands of her
Show More
husband Norman Daniels and are pretty horrific so it is easy to like and feel for her. That said the best character for me is that of Norman. Norman is a police officer and seen by the public as a hero but in private is a psychotic monster who is slowly losing his mind.(Although for me this too was a little overdone in the end).

Rosie takes Norman's credit card and escapes from his clutches but Norman is not about to give her up and comes looking for her. Rosie visits a pawn shop and spots a painting which grabs her attention and seems to want her as much as she wants it. At home Rosie escapes into another world via the painting.

It is this part of the story which rather lost it for me. Although there have been other books about domestic abuse, so it might not have been overly original, but personally I would have preferred the story to have stayed as a simple chase one. The dream sequences baffled rather than entralled me.

Overall I felt that the author started off with a good premise but in attempt to be original or at least to give it a twist he rather lost the plot. An OK read but no more than that.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Stahl-Ricco
A brutal read, due to the main topic - domestic violence. Norman, the abuser, is a sick, sick man who does terrible things to his wife, Rosie. She escapes and he follows. And with a super natural painting, she escapes again. It's a good story, with great characters (I loved Gert!), and its slow
Show More
pace benefits its complexity! I wasn't a fan of the "through-the-painting" parts of the tale, and the epilogue did nothing for me. Still, it thrilled me and chilled me, and really, what's not to like when it's Uncle Stevie? Viva Ze Bool!
Show Less
LibraryThing member ChromiumDomium
Quite simply unputdownable
LibraryThing member Anagarika-Sean
This was good. Mr. King loves using portals/doors into other worlds that can always turn sinister in less than a second.
LibraryThing member smitkevi
This book is fairly typical for Stephen King. It contains many of the familiar ingredients we're used to seeing (small town paranoia, alternate universes, psychotic villains), but his realistic way of portraying an abusive relationship between two brilliantly painted characters forced me to invest
Show More
emotionally in the story in a way I rarely find myself doing. As a result, I found the suspense much more engaging and the terror (unfortunately I'm rarely scared by horror but this one got me a few times) more real.
In the end, it wasn't the best of King but it was far from his worst.
Show Less
LibraryThing member barpurple
Everyday horrors blended with a touch of unreal supernatural make Rose Madder hard to put down. King's skilful story weaving had me in tears at some points and wanting to scream "look out!" at others. This is an example of horror that's all the more spine chilling because of its everyday nature.
Show More
Brilliant, plain and simple.
Show Less
LibraryThing member queencersei
Rosie Daniels is the battered wife of police officer Norman Daniels. After enduring fourteen years of horrific abuse one day Rosie suddenly 'wakes up' and flees her husband with just the clothes on her back and $350 that she took from his ATM account.

Free from Norman Rosie first finds herself in a
Show More
women's shelter, but quickly transitions into a good job giving voice to books on tape and her own apartment. Deciding to sell her engagement ring she finds herself in a pawn shop, where she meets Bill, an honest to goodness nice guy. But Rosie also meets something else in that shop, a curious painting entitled Rose Madder, which she buys on a whim. As Rosie settles into her new life, she knows in the back of her mind that Norman has not forgotten her and in fact is coming for her. But now Rosie has an ally. Something Detective Norman will never see coming, Rose Madder. And Rose Madder will repay Norman for his cruelty.
Show Less
LibraryThing member srboone
A total misfire. The rape survival story is bland and Harlequin Romance quality. The Greek mythology aspect is interesting, but the marriage of the two is overworked. King tried too hard on this one.
LibraryThing member Blazingice0608
A very underrated novel for King, this book gets a lot of negative feedback, and while it definitly has its flaws, it is still a very wonderful book and a must read for any fan of Stephen King. Really shows King's mastery of characterization, Rosie and Norman are both amazing characters, one being
Show More
the heroine, one being the villian. Rosie's journey and the transformation she makes is stunning, and King uses some beautifully descriptive writing to take us through it, especially in the supernatural parts of the book, his imagination is astounding. The bad part is, around the middle of the book, it becomes rather bloated and a little boring, but the rest of it was very interesting and nicely paced, followed by a pretty good ending. Also, it would have been better as just a psychological thriller, rather than just that but with a supernatural theme, which is why i only give it 3 and a half stars rather than 4+ stars. All in all though, as i said its a wonderful read, especially for diehard fans of King and Dark Tower since it has some connections to it as well.
Show Less
LibraryThing member bhowell
This is an excellent thriller, again King's strong theme of domestic violence and male abuse of family, harrowing, like Delores Claiburne.
LibraryThing member oxlena
My favorite Stephen King book to date. It's a little 'out there,' and probably not as "good" as a lot of his other novels, but it sucked me into it. It takes endurance to get through it if you're not used to the fantasy-mythological stuff. It was confusing, and has a less-than-perfect ending, but I
Show More
found it entertaining regardless. 4 out of 5 psychotic cops on a major head-trip.
Show Less
LibraryThing member srboone
A total misfire. The rape survival story is bland and Harlequin Romance quality. The Greek mythology aspect is interesting, but the marriage of the two is overworked. King tried too hard on this one.
LibraryThing member CDVerhoff
I was taken in by the painting, too. This was an imaginative piece. Perhaps not as suspenseful as some, but I enjoyed it.
LibraryThing member TLMorganfield
I listened to this as an audio book, and that's probably why I actually finished it. Good stuff up until Rose goes into the painting the first time (had I been reading this instead of listening, I probably would have put the book down here. And not because I don't like supernatural--I quite love
Show More
fantasy--but for some reason I'm less fond of SK's supernatural elements than I am of his real world elements.). Gets better once she returns to the real world again: actually, it gets really good, but then things get solved by going back into the supernatural world and so the ending felt lackluster for me. I was pleased to see that characters I really liked survived Norman's pursuit of Rose (Gert and Bill); I was really afraid that King was going to axe at least one of them.
Show Less
LibraryThing member andyray
This is the first of four books SK wrote while he was in early sobriety. You may note the absence of blood and gore in this, the Girl who Loved Tom Gordon, Hearts in Atlantis, and Gerald's Game. A different more sane insane King!
LibraryThing member cathymoore
Classic Stephen King centred around a domestic violence victim and her attempt to escape her psychotic husband. Really good, even at the point where, as King is apt to, the story suddenly shifts to a parallell universe. I often feel that when this happens it seems like a bit of a cop-out, as if the
Show More
author got bored of writing the story almost. In this case though when the story moves into the paranormal it continues to read really well. I was also pleased to find parts of it really quite frightening as well, which is what we all want from a good horror story isn't it?
Show Less
LibraryThing member Lukerik
I'm afraid this is quite lazily written. Norman's condition is one dimensionally drawn. If you've read The Shining you know he can do this better. The love affair reads like a badly written romance. If you've read 'Salem's Lot you know he can do this better too. Early on the story reads well but
Show More
the fantasy seems arbitrary and any meaning he wants to find in it comes too late to save the novel.
Show Less
LibraryThing member buffalogr
Another great Steven King production. Listened with much interest to what seemed, at first, like a cop novel and a battered woman...but, along came with a twist .
LibraryThing member bibliophile_pgh
This is one of Stephen King's more disturbing books. It deals with domestic violence in which a wife tries to escape of husband who is a cop in order to start her life over. There are some supernatural aspects of the story. But the disturbing aspects of the story is really how he creates the
Show More
nightmare through the wife's point of view.
Show Less
LibraryThing member selkins
A woman on her own, a painting that may be a gateway -- to another world, or to her subconscious? Is she going crazy? Is her husband already there? Who's the woman in the painting? Is the Minotaur real? Who can be trusted, under what circumstances? Great read, evocative imagery.
LibraryThing member TobinElliott
This is the official first book of my Great Stephen King Re-read, Part Two.

A few years back, I read about the first twenty years of his novels and short story collections, from CARRIE straight through to INSOMNIA, skipping only the Dark Tower stuff, as I'll tackle that as a separate read all on
Show More
its own. This time around, the plan is to tackle the next fifteen years and go from this novel straight through to UNDER THE DOME.

Having said that, I started into this novel with a lot of trepidation, because, while I remembered the basic storyline about it, it wasn't one of his novels that really stuck with me, or left a lasting impression, in that I remember it being one of his "middling" novels.

And it seems to be one of his more forgotten ones...never really mentioned much, never made into a movie. It feels like it just came and went and got overshadowed by his next, brilliant release.

Reading it for the second time, I find that kind of a sad fact, as this book is far better than I remember it being.

And it's strange that this novel never stuck with me, as there's two somewhat personal connections. The first is, Rose is stated to have been born in 1962, so she's the same age is me. The second, far more disconcerting connection—and one I would have been keenly aware of when I read it the first time around—is that her husband Norman...?

Yeah, he's more violent, and he's more a biter, but mentally? Every diseased little thought I read that went through Norman's mind? All the thoughts about homosexuals and non-whites, and Jews and everyone else that crossed his eye of judgement? But most especially, Norman's views on women?

Yeah, Norman could have been modeled straight off my own father.

So, for those reasons, at least initially, this novel truly grabbed me and frightened me and sickened me. Forty years after his death, I felt like I was hanging out with my father for a few hundred pages.

But the book would need to have far more than that to keep me going. And this novel delivers. It's easily one of King's nastiest, most horrible, and horrifyingly real, villains, and I wonder if it was more than readers were used to from King and that's why this one never attained the status of some of his others. But King also delivers on the compelling story and character of Rose. Yes, she tends to get fantastic lucky break after lucky break, making the book a little too much fantasy, a touch too much to fully suspend disbelief.

But still, the story that King constructs in harrowing. The only false note, for me at least was the extended first trip into the painting. I know it's required for the end, but it did tend to drag on a little too long.

But overall, I have to say, reading this novel almost thirty years later?

It's so much better than I ever gave it credit for.
Show Less

Original publication date

1995-06-26

Other editions

Rose Madder by Stephen King (Paperback)
Rose Madder by Stephen King (Hardcover)

Similar in this library

Page: 0.7523 seconds