Rose Madder

Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece by any other name...
Review: The more I read by Stephen King, the more entranced I become by his work as a whole. In particular, I have come to seek out the various threads of the Dark Tower that are woven through many of his books. Rose Madder, which does indeed weave itself into King's masterwork (while maintaining its viability as a "stand-alone" novel) is a masterpiece.

Norman Daniels, though thoroughly human, is a monster more horrible that many of King's worst beasts. Cujo has nothing on him when it comes to ferocity. Annie Wilkes looks downright domestic when compared to Normie.

Yet evil is not the whole name of the game in Rose Madder. It is more of a story about finding life-even in the shadow of death. Norman's wife Rose is a character for the ages (one of King's greatest creations)-and in spite of Norman-this is her story.

I don't want to give away too much of this wonderful story. Rose Madder is a masterpiece of gradual revelation. So rather than sucking the life out of it, I'll just make a few random comments:

First, I give this book my full recommendation. There are scenes of horrid nastiness here...yet there are also moments of great hope and beauty. King captures a great truth of life in this.

Rose Madder has some wonderfully developed minor characters (one of which becomes a big character in one of King's later novels-Desperation). One character-Gert, is my all time favorite "King" minor character. She sends Norman a great "message."

I must finally note that the audio version of this book is wonderfully done by both King (Norman's Perspective) and Blair Brown (Rose's Perspective). Rose Madder is certainly not King's most "important" or even representative novel. That said--it still gets my five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but not his best
Review: "It's best to be ruthless with the past. It aint the blows we're dealt that matter, but the ones we survive."

Stephen King never ceases to amaze me. It's quotes like one one above that display his talent as a writer.

Rose Madder was a...interesting book. I'll admit I didn't see the major twist in the book coming. I guess it was alluded to on the sleve, but I didn't quite understand at the time what it meant.

Anyway, I enjoyed the majority of this book. There was one small section that I couldn't get into (I can't say what, without giving something away), but the rest of the book was good.

I gave the book only 3 stars (it was between 3 & 4), just because there were some things that I just didn't get into. If you know King, you know he deals a lot with supernatural things, and sometimes I just want some reality. This wasn't his best, but it was worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: missed opportunity
Review: The first half of this book is wonderful. Fully drawn characters, pulls you in immediately and the scenes of domestic violence and mental anguish are truly scary. Then you get to the second half of the book. I saw another reviewer called it 'a confusing mess' and I can't put it any better. Usually, the supernatural elements are the best part of a King book, but here it's like an uninvited houseguest. The narrative gets bogged down and by the time you get to the end you're in a quagmire. A good book, but it could have been so much better.

Rating:
Summary: A Rose for a Rose
Review: Steven King has done it again. He has managed to keep me in suspense with every turning of the page. Rose Madder is about Rose, an abused wife who has been in fear of her husband Norman Daniels for fourteen years. Norman Daniels is a dedicated cop and is an abusive husband. Rose then notices one morning a drop of blood on her plain white bed spread and she is then persuaded to flee from her home in search of a new life. She managed to escape, but Rose fails to realize that because Norman is a cop he can easily track anyone down. The entire book is excellent to read when you have too much time on your hands.

Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced thriller with a touch of the supernatural
Review: I read this novel in one day of endless delays in an airport. It kept me entertained through what may have otherwise been an interminable 24 hours, and really, that's all I asked of King when I bought this book. I was a bit weary of the battered-woman-runs-away-and-starts-over theme, as I have read many books with this theme over the last five years (Sleeping With the Enemy and Black and Blue come to mind). However, Rose Madder has a refreshing twist to it as it is alternately narrated by the abuser and the abused, and reveals the abuser's increasing descent into madness as the plot progresses.

Rose Daniels has been tormented by her husband Norman, a strong, smart cop, for 14 years. One day she is jolted into escape by the sight of a single drop of blood on the sheets as she is making the bed, and the recognition that if she does not leave, Norman will kill her. With nothing but Norman's ATM card and the clothes on her back, Rose flees to Chicago. There she finds a women's shelter and begins a new life as a reader for recorded books on tape.

She also purchases a painting of a woman staring off over a pyramid and bluffs, wearing a rose madder gown. The painting speaks to her, and she eventually enters the painting. It plays a pivotal role in Rose's escape from Norman. It helps her to escape him, but also sparks a rage in Rose that is evil and becomes overpowering.

The best part of this book is the narration through the eyes of the completely unglued Norman, who is determined to hunt Rose down and sentence her to a slow, excruciating death. As his hunt for Rose intensifies, he spirals ever further into utter madness. The weakness of this book, to me, was King's reliance upon the Rose Madder painting to help Rose defeat Norman. I thought initially that the supernatural element of this story added to it, but in the end it seemed overdone and not necessary. There is an entire segment in the middle of the novel describing Rose's entry into the painting that drags and significantly detracts from the overall quality of the story.

Overall, though, this book was well-written, richly characterized and exciting. It contains some pretty disgusting and gruesome depictions of Norm's violence. King's sensitivity to domestic violence also added to Rose Madder's appeal. This story will definitely keep you entertained and on the edge of your seat throughout.

Rating:
Summary: This is an.... interesting book
Review: I really thought that this book was excellent! i don't really know if this is a book for everyone, I mean many men probably wouldn't like this book because in my opinion it TOTALLY trashes the male character, this is only a book that i would recomend for DIEHARD king fans, some books are better for the older women who like horror stories and this is defintely a novel that I would only recommend for people who don't really like many of kings othr novels becuase this is a MUCH MUCH different type of book than some other types of scary novels and its MUCH MUCH different than any of the others that i read b4! ! ! ! ! !!!!! ! the DeadZone being an example i fuond these books to be profoundly different
Well i 'd just like to say that this book is mych better than say Hearts In Atlantis, i found that nostalgic and DULL but not very good at all, i found elements the same in that book and in Rose Maddr however, for instance he uses crazy and unbeleivable supernatural powers to make both books remotley intersesting and as an afterthought i'm going to decide to change my original 4 star rating to a 2 star, i alluded to things that i hadn't tought of b4 and i ralizedthat this book isn' t original at all!
ONLY FOR DIE HARD KING FANS AND THE OLDER WOMEN!

Rating:
Summary: "We Need To Talk-UP CLOSE!!!
Review: The above words are the most frequent spoken by the character Norman Daniels, Rosie's MONSTER of a husband! Rosie has been with her cop husband Norman for 14 years too long, when the abuse became way too much to bear. So one day finally, early in the book, she escapes from the house with Norman's ATM card in hand,fetching the nearest cab to the bus depot. She draws $750.00 out of the bank first though, and throws the ATM card in the trash. She ends up about 750 miles away, at a shleter for abused women like herself. It is there that she makes a new life for herself, though she is still scared.

When Norman discovers her escape, he's FURIOUS, and manages to track her down. He catches up to her eventually, and what happens next-well I won't tell. You have to read to find out.

This was one of my favorite King stories which I have read twice.

Rating:
Summary: Rose great
Review: Reading other reviews, I found many people thought this an unusual King book. I have to disagree. This is pure SK. "Rose Madder" has all elements that make King a great writer (I have read more than 20 of his books).

Rose Daniels is the abused wife who suddenly escapes the prison that was her marriage. In a new city, she discovers a people who will help her get over her violent husband and a life of abuses. Then she founds a new job, and, possibly, a man totally different from Norman Daniels, her husband.

But Norman won't let it go at that. He will go after her to hell if needed, and if he finds her, he will send Rose right there, if he can.

Norman and Rose are extremely interesting characters. They are complex, real and very well developed. When a writer is able to have characters like that, the story can be nothing but good. Norman is raving mad, but in the middle of that madness he is able to find some lucidity and act accordingly to get to his final objective. Rose finds in her new life the strength she always needed and couldn't get because she knew nothing else.

Sometimes people forget fiction is just what it is: immagination; it all came from someone's head. Of course, this book, like most stories, has its flaws, either psychological or factual, but fiction, at this level, is pure enterteinment and should be treated accordingly.

"Rose Madder" is like other books by Stephen King. "Bag of Bones" and "Dreamcatcher", for example. They blend day-today facts with a little "unusual" stuff. King does that very well, and I think this "unusual" counts in a positive way.

Grade 8.6/10

Rating:
Summary: It would have been better if he'd wanted to write it
Review: Between the publication of The Wastelands and Wizard and Glass, Stephen King's career was in a sort of a queer doldrom. It seems obvious that he wanted to write another Dark Tower book--he admitted to as much in his forward to the latter piece--but he was afraid to continue the series from the point at which he'd left off. The end result was a short series of books that were ostensibly stand-alone titles, that unfortunately became mired in his rather obvious desire to write about something else. It is from that period, unfortunately, that Rose Madder comes.

The book itself shows some obvious high points. Now, I'm sure that anybody who's ever been battered (or a woman, for that matter) will find some errors in King's depiction of Rose, but overall, I think it comes out okay. The characters are all pretty well developed, and all are believable. Gretta (the Refrigerator Perry lookalike who teaches the women self-defense) may well be the most accurately written female character Stephen King has ever created. More importantly, King finally seems to have washed himself of most of the borderline misogynistic tendencies in his writing (quite apparent in It) and the queer, and utterly false, association between battered women and lesbianism that showed up in Insomnia. The good, then, is that Stephen King has managed to transcend some of the views and tendencies that held his previous work back, to create a much more realistic and accurate depiction of the issue he tries to deal with.

Unfortunately, this book has a rather substantial downside as well, and that downside is the Dark Tower. Stephen King is well known for leaving little literary Easter Eggs sitting in his books for the attentive reader, but this amounts to much more than simple egg dropping. If you haven't read the Dark Tower books, I can personally guarantee that you WILL be confused at some point, and the plot and character motivations will become exquisitely obtuse and difficult to understand. This'll happen right around the time that supernatural things start creeping in (the section entitled The Temple of the Bull). It WILL detract from the experience.

This problem is only compounded by King's rather ham-fisted handling of symbolism throughout this piece. In most of his writing, you won't find too much in the way of abstract symbolism. Steve tries to break that pattern here, and he doesn't do it very well. I was personally sick of reading the phrase "Rose Madder" (used to refer to an actual color) around the time I was two thirds of the way through, and some of the symbols he introduces (notably the fox and the tree) are too obscure for even me to understand. Indeed, this would have been a much better novel if the entire epilogue had simply been sheared off--I can find no discernible purpose behind its inclusion other than confusing the reader. The character change that he induces in Rosie near the end of the book seems arbitrary and disturbing--an attempt to say something about something, but just what either of those somethings are escapes me.

All the same, read superficially, this is still a good book. The plot is realistic where it should be, and fantastic where it should be, and the whole is spun together into a fairly coherent story. While the plot may leave those who aren't familiar with King's magnum opus a little confused at points, it's still a good way to pass a few hours, even if it does fail as a conveyer for any message.

Rating:
Summary: Stephen King's ROSE MADDER
Review: After years of mental and physical abuse by her husband, Rosie Daniels is shocked into making a stand when seeing a single drop of blood. With no contacts, no skills, and nowhere to go Rosie finds strength in a peculiar painting she finds in a pawn shop. Slowly she begins creating a new life. But she knows her husband Norman is searching for her with instincts developed from being a career cop. If this story had been written by just about any other writer of horror it would be considered a success. But King has always proved himself a cut above the rest and ROSE MADDER is run of the mill by his standards. However, he still does a great job developing the two main characters. Watching Rosie blossom and Norman regress is a real treat...