Great suspense. Wife runs from her abusive husband who is now tracking her.STORY BRIEF:The first 10% is Rose living with Norman. They’ve been married fourteen years. He bites, stabs, and punches her. (Most of this harm is told rather than shown so it’s a little less painful for the reader.) The next 80% is Rose leaving Norman, surviving with help from an organization, meeting someone, and Norman’s search for her. The organization helps abused women on the run. The women in the organization have some good parts in the story.REVIEWER’S OPINION:Most of the book is suspense. I was on the edge of my seat. I didn’t want to stop. I was afraid of this monstrous abusive cop husband Norman. He’s tracking her. He’s ultra smart and cunning. He’s cruel and killing others to get to her. I was fascinated with Norman’s thoughts, his plans, his words, his actions. Parts of the story were weird and different which I loved, like the oddness of Norman using a bull’s head mask. I loved the author’s creativity being inside Norman’s head. This was better than a demon. This was a human monster.I loved how Rose became strong and her actions. I was intrigued with her anger and rage. She started out as a wimp, but she didn’t stay that way. There is a paranormal element, but it’s secondary or a small part of the story. The paranormal idea was ok, but I probably would have liked the story just as well without it. Many suspense stories disappoint me when characters do stupid things to put themselves in danger. None of that here. Almost everyone did smart things - good guys and the bad guy.I was pleased with the story going several years into the future after the main crisis was resolved, like a long epilogue. It was satisfying, and it was a feel good happy ending.One area bothered me. There is a long dream-like scene in the middle of the book. It was a little boring due to a lot of description and it took her a long time to walk somewhere. I wanted the dream to hurry up so I could get back to the story.There are two sex scenes involving men touching men, one of them torture. Another scene has a woman rear-door raped.AUDIOBOOK ISSUES:Great music introducing the bad guy scenes. It was deep and monstrous with words similar to “hate hate...hate...”Sadly I did not like Stephen King narrating the bad guy parts. I like SK as a person, and I kept thinking of SK as a nice guy. His voice does not fit the bad guy. It would be so much better with a deeper voiced male actor doing those scenes, something compatible with the bad guy music. I hope they produce another version with a different male narrator. I was very happy with SK narrating his nonfiction book “On Writing” but not this book.Blair Brown was excellent and easily 5 stars narrating the Rose parts.DATA:Narrative mode: 3rd person Rose and Norman. Unabridged audiobook reading time: 17 hrs and 28 mins. Swearing language: strong including religious swear words, sexual, ethnic, and racial slurs. Sexual language: strong. Number of sex scenes: four. Setting: mostly 1994 a town in eastern U.S. and a large city in the midwest. Book copyright: 1995. Genre: suspense thriller with a little paranormal, abused women. Ending: happy for the main good guys, bad for the bad guy.OTHER BOOKS:For a list of my reviews of other Stephen King books, see my 5 star review of Carrie.http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
A fine example of books that start out brilliantly, lose the grip somewhere in between, and just go downhill from there. I cannot believe I finished it. My only motivation behind finishing it was to find out if the end is really what I was thinking of. And no, it was worse.An abused wife runs away from home; the descriptive scenes, the in-depth psychological insights about the male and female protagonists were just awesome. They hooked to me the book. And I had heard so much about Stephen King, I was so thrilled to find myself finally reading him. What a disappointment!What started out as an abused wife's escape from a demented and mentally sick husband, soon turned into something boringly-Halloween. I mean, the heroine actually going INTO the painting! The writer did not explain the relation of Rosie with the woman in the picture, and why was it necessary for Rosie to go into the picture in the first place, was unclear to me. What was the role of the fox in the novel? The heroin does not get the final revenge, and then she turns against her boyfriend and directs her rage towards him? The lovable heroin, that writer so beautifully and strongly portrayed in the beginning was lost, and what came out was just crap. and the end!!! My God, could it be more abysmal than that? That was the most disappointing end to any story I have ever read. It was made even more disappointing by the fact that I really really really liked the book initially. Such a waste of time.Anyway, I'm not going to let this one experience put me off of Stephen King forever. I'm going to give him another chance:) I've started reading Carrie - lets see if it helps me improve this writer's ratings.
What do You think about Rose Madder (1995)?
While reading this book I kept forgetting that it was a Stephen King novel. It has it's twists and turns (as his usual work does) but this was so much more than good vs. evil. Rose Madder is an emotional account of an abused woman who is trying to break free from a tormenting life, and has what is portrayed as a psychological break through as she goes on a journey to be free. King also touches on the downfalls of the system that fails to protect women from situations like Rose is in. Unfortunately there is some graphical and language issues throughout the book, but I would expect to see them in this type of dialogue.
—Megan Lucas
La mente despierta conoce el concepto del sueño, pero para la persona que sueña no existe el mundo de la vigilia, el mundo real, la cordura; la confusión demencial del sueño. Rose McClendon Daniels durmió inmersa en la locura de su marido durante otros nueve años.Es un buen libro de King. No es de lo mejor, pero se deja leer. Es una novela que engancha desde el principio. Ya con ese prólogo es imposible no seguir leyendo. El autor nos escribe sobre Rose Daniels, una mujer que trata de escapar del demente y maltratador de su marido mientras él la busca desquiciadamente. Me gustó mucho que King, sacando el lado de fantasía (el cuadro), nos muestra una realidad; algo que muchas mujeres viven. Y partiendo de esa realidad, nos muestra cómo una mujer decide decir "basta" y se escapa de esa violencia. Nos muestra cómo ella siente los miedos, las inseguridades, hasta la culpa; cómo trata de empezar una nueva vida.En algunas partes se me hizo bastante pesado, sin embargo nunca llegó al punto de aburrirme.Tiene un final bastante bueno.Buen libro.
—Franco Santos
Now I remember why I didn't like this the first time I read it. It wears out its welcome a good 60 pages before the end. We get our denouement, and then we're made to wade through a goodly chunk of book before we can call it done. Still, Rose Madder is okay. I think what keeps this book pretty middle of the road for me is Norman Daniels, our cliched villain. King has three types of male antagonists: women beaters, child molesters, and racists. Norman Daniels suffers from the former and the latter while having also been molested as a child. I'm not a huge fan of the whole molested-people-turn-into-monsters storyline. I know it happens, that the cycle can continue (not all the time, but it does happen), I just don't like reading about it. I would much rather read about someone overcoming their past instead of becoming it. I like to see damaged children beat the odds. Call me an optimist in that regard. Things this book does well are as follows: awesome protagonist (Rosie is one of King's best female characters, says this guy [cue eye rolls]); the gore toward the end of the book is classic King and disturbing as hell; the Dark Tower tie-ins; the thematic elements; the bull mask. Yeah, I dug all that. And if you dig King, I think you will too.Expect spoilers for several King books if you click on View Spoiler. You've been warned.(view spoiler)[Obvious Tie-Ins:KaPaul Sheldon (his Misery novels are mentioned half a dozen times throughout the book)Susan Day (Insomnia)Rose Madder turns into a spider creature, much like Pennywise and Mordred.Theoretical Tie-Ins:Any of you that read my Decade with King posts will know that I believe all of King's books tie into one of three things: It, The Tommyknockers, or the Dark Tower series. Well, all the glowing green shit in this book makes me think the Temple of the Bull might be somehow connected to the Great Old Ones from the Prim. Perhaps the temple is where the Grays were worshipped once upon a when? It does beg the question... (hide spoiler)]
—Edward Lorn
