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.


It would have been better if he'd wanted to write it   August 30, 2002
 14 out of 19 found this review helpful

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.


This is an amazing book.   December 8, 2001
 11 out of 12 found this review helpful

ROSE MADDER has everything. It's:

a real life thriller, with real life horror
a story of courage and survival
a fantasy adventure
a love story
a dark comedy
a satirical look at the left liberal political community

I'm sure I could come up with more, given the time.

Rosie McClendon is a heroine who gains the reader's utmost sympathy with the insane horror of the abuse she has endured, and her courage in leaving despite her terror. As she builds a new life and digs out her true character, long buried by subjugation to her brutal husband, we admire her and enjoy her humor and spunk.

Norman Daniels, the viciously abusive husband she leaves, is one of the most terrifying, compelling, horrifyingly likeable, and darkly funny villians I can imagine. The sections written from his point of view are chilingly enjoyable. He sets out to find her by getting inside her head, "trolling," as he calls it. He imagines he is her, and does everything she would do, tracing her every step with deadly accuracy, leaving a trail of mutilated corpses in his wake.

When Norman acquires a hokey rubber bull mask at a carnival, uses it as a hand puppet and begins having conversations with it, well, we know he has really lost it. I found these scenes quite funny.

When the painting Rosie bought at a pawn shop turns out to be a doorway into a secret world, the novel takes a disconcerting leap from gritty reality to mythic fantasy. When Norman follows Rosie and new boyfriend Bill into the painting, Norm merges with the mask to become a sort of Minotaur.

Norman's crimes, and the cunning with which he stalks his prey, are only too believable. In a fully realistic novel, his end would be predictable - lifelong incarceration in a prison for the criminally insane, or getting killed somehow. Only in a fantasy world with the aid of supernatural figures is it possible to wreak satisfying vengeance for such crimes.


Awful   November 28, 1999
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

A good idea ruined by Stephen King-stupidness. In my opinion, the last good novel this guy wrote was Misery. Since trying to stay awake through Insomnia and loathing Regulators, I've decided to give the rest of his novels 100 pages before I decide to trash it or stay with it. Life is just too short to waste time when there are so many far superior authors out there. If I didn't keep getting these Stephen Kings as gifts I probably wouldn't bother at all. On to the review: I have to admit, by page 80 I was very hooked. Everything went along quite nicely until around page 300, when the patented Stephen King-stupidness kicked in. You know what I mean: the villian starts spewing that gawd-awful baby-talk...."Anna-Anna-bo-Banna, banna-fanna-fo-Fanna". Give me a break. When is King going to grow up with his readers? He's writing for 16 year-olds. I've lost all desire to read any more King.


Good at first but then...   January 14, 2000
 8 out of 13 found this review helpful

Rose Madder is the story of a woman who has been abused by her husband for fifteen years and decides enough is enough and leaves while he is away at work.

I felt this book was a fantastic piece of literature up until King made it into a fantasy type of story. It was really believable at first, both the story and the characters. I was hooked into it the moment I picked it up and through most of it I could not put it down. I was curious to see what would happen to Rose on her quest to escape her horrible life and her husband, Norman, was one of King's best villians.

I know King is a horror writer and tends to add a bit of the supernatural to his novels but I think this one should have been the exception. I feel he ruined a perfect story by adding the silly stuff at the end.

But overall, I would still recommend this book. It was one of his best.

P.S. Please read my other reviews.