The Diary Of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life At Rose Red (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
First I would like to point out that while Stephen King was responsible for the miniseries, which takes place after the events of this book, he is not the author of this book, which becomes quickly apparent as you read. It lacks King's style, and I'm surprised that any fan of his would think this was the case more than five pages in. The actual author (according to wikipedia, and the author's own site) is Ridley Pearson. He's apparently a really real person, with his own list of books on amazon.com and everything. Given the attempted ARG elements that accompanied the promotion of these materials, I can see where it got confusing for some people. Now, on to the review of the book itself:This started out as a decent story, (one I've been meaning to read since seeing the television miniseries when it originally aired just about ten years ago, at the time of this writing. I don't remember much about the series, except that at the point it had aired, I was well versed enough in Kingology to predict every single turn of the plot, much to my family's annoyance.) and I was really gripped by the beginning of it.However, as it the book goes on the diary gimmick of it feels very much tacked on, with conversations related a touch too precisely, and obvious "writer tricks" stuck into the narrative, spoiling the illusion of an actual journal. Additionally, while the story shies away from the big obvious scares; leaving you with mysterious disappearances and a dearth of any kind of gore, it doesn't provide scares in any significant other ways, either. The fact is simply that if you're going for moody and atmospheric frights, a diary style presentation simply doesn't work as well. It puts the author into a catch-22; if he tries to make it sound like a diary, he's going to lose the sense of atmosphere, as most people don't add descriptive passages to their journals, a necessary technique to build mood and eeriness. If on the other hand, he tries to evoke the mood properly, he loses the real "diary" feeling. There are cases where an author has been able to pull this kind of thing off, but it's a fine line to walk. Additionally, as the story moved on, the characters became more and more exaggerated, to the point that it began to feel cartoonish. I'm all for having the characters change and grow and so on, but this really got ridiculous. This also happened with the plot, which seemed like it was trying for subtle strangeness in the beginning of the book,, and then just got completely insane later on, and not in a good scary way. By the end, nothing anyone was doing made any sense. There were a few characters in the story who didn't undergo this bizzarre transformation, but we don't see enough of them for them to really get interesting. Promising characters are tossed aside too soon, and as the narrator's madness grows, we start to wonder where all of her former friends and her family are in all this.I mostly gave this two stars based on the novel's very strong and interesting start (if not for that it would most definitely have been a one star book). Make no mistake, the first half of this book is pretty good. The exotic locales, the protagonist's strange husband, and Ellen's internal life are all very real and fascinating. It just doesn't keep up this pace, and devolves slowly into nonsense. A final note:Certain parts of the book were "edited out," and placed on a website somewhere, for reasons I don't truly understand. Supposedly, this is because the fake researcher who found this fake diary thought they were too juicy for the public (so she put them on the internet..? Oh... kay. That makes sense I guess?). The problem is, it seems the site has been abandoned, and the excerpts are now gone, with no mirror of them in sight. I was promised debauchery, and it seems that now I will never get it. Though from what I could gather off related sites, this debauchery includes sex scenes with an icicle, which sounds... uncomfortable to say the least, so perhaps it's better I can't find them.
As haunted house books go, this one had an interesting premise but I didn't find the story interesting. The biggest problem was the narrator, for me. The diary conceit is always difficult to pull off, perhaps especially when the book's set in the past. Ellen Rimbauer was, for me, an annoying combination of self-conscious historical voice and modern novel habits. For instance, I'm not going to say what a teenaged bride at the turn of the century would or wouldn't possibly know about, she did seem to have the standard interest in recording bodily functions, sex crimes and pretty much anything to do with sex. Although she says over and over she never wants anyone to read the diary, she still feels the need to explain things to herself she would presumably already know. For instance, if you've bought a set of autographed books by Jack London, you would think you would know who Jack London was and not have to remind yourself he's a clever new writer. There's of course also a lot of very self-conscious references to past events and people innocently mentioned with no idea they will one day be household names. Ellen occasionally takes time out of living a life that seems like would make her conservative to express concern for less privileged people or note how she's much more comfortable with them than she was at first. This is especially uncomfortable given that her "best friend" is her maid, a magical negro that she brought home from her honeymoon. Serious magical negro trope going on.Presumably the idea was inspired by the Winchester Mystery house, but the idea of an ever-growing house that eats people is a more interesting idea than the tale of the abusive marriage it reflects here, imo.
What do You think about The Diary Of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life At Rose Red (2001)?
I really loved this book. I recieved my copy as a surprise gift from my husband and I read it right after I watched the series on TV. The book is very well written and is just like a diary. It complaments the movie very well if you have seen the movie by all means read this companion book. A mysterious and haunting spirit lurks within the walls of Rose Red, the setting for Stephen King's upcoming ABC miniseries tie-in by the same name. Built on a Native American burial ground in early 20th-century Seattle, the mansion which is constantly under construction sets the scene for a multitude of inexplicable disappearances and ghastly deaths. While moody oil tycoon John Rimbauer refuses to acknowledge that the house has a mind of its own, his young wife, Ellen, dramatizes these eerie events with great detail in her diary, often personifying the house as if it were a living being. (Or, perhaps, a non-living being?) While the evolution of Ellen's character from innocent and submissive to frighteningly powerful is a slow process, the language and questioning nature of her entries entice the reader as the mystery of Rose Red is brought into full bloom. Ellen also reveals frustration and disappointment with her marriage namely her husband's unfaithfulness and alarmingly frequent involvement in voyeuristic activities as well as a growing confusion about her sexual identity and attachment to her friend and African handmaid, Sukeena. In addition to extensive dialogue that makes the diary seem a tad more like a novel than someone's personal confessions, Ellen's entries are accompanied by a handful of explanatory notes put in by the "editor" and supposed professor of paranormal studies, Joyce Reardon. The people mentioned in the diary, as well as Reardon, are all characters in Rose Red, which was created directly for television by the bestselling author. As to who penned the actual text of the diary? That remains as much of a mystery as Rose Red herself.
—Tabby Kat
I went back an re-watched "Rose Red" recently (on VHS no less! Recorded straight from the magic talking box! Remnant of an ABC in whose programming only lawyers existed!), a mini-series remembered fondly by myself and about five other Americans, and decided to read (or, more accurately, listen) to this book. I found myself very pleasantly surprised by this lil' story, a nice spooky tale to enjoy of an evening, particularly for Winchester Mystery House enthusiasts such as myself. Nothing terribly deep, nothing terribly innovative, but an oddly soothing, almost old-fashioned, haunted house tale. *I feel like I should also qualify my positive review, after reading many very negative ones, thusly: this book is what it is: a fun, if somewhat silly, ghost story in the tradition of "The House On Haunted Hill" and other Vincent Price gems. This is a good book to listen to; it might be less entertaining to read. It is, to me painfully obviously, NOT an actual diary of an actual Edwardian lady, this broad is way too open-minded and saucy in her writings to be real, but it is an enjoyably campy take on what an anonymous writer writing a fake diary as a companion to a Stephen King mini-series would think an Edwardian lady's thoughts would be like. Don't overthink this thing and you might just enjoy the ride.
—Sabrina Barnett
Written to augment Stephen Kng's series titled Rose Red, throughout the book, I wanted to quit, but was too many pages into it to admit defeat.I should have shut the book long before I did. This is a fictional diary written by a young women of society, who at the beginning of the 1900's becomes a bride to a wealthy oil industrialist John Rimbauer.Mysterious and elusive the rumors fly about Rimbauer's insatiable appetite of young women and his visits to seedy areas where he can purchase his pleasures.As his bride both loves and hates him, she moves into a huge multiple roomed mansion he built high on a hill.As her anger festers, she prays to both God, the source of light, and The Devil, the source of dark.As the story progresses the mansion, Rose Red, takes a life of itself and seems to swallow people who become lost in the multi-layered evilness of the house.This was a ghost story that was, in my opinion, poorly delivered. The lack of suspense and the ability to believe the story was missing, and there was way too much repetitive redundancy regarding the personalities of Ellen and John. I'll chalk this up to one I should have given the Nancy Pearl 50 page rule.No stars for this one. My only positive thought is that I only paid ,25 cents for the book at a library sale.
—Linda Lipko
