Rose Madder

Rose Madder by Stephen King

Rose Madder follows the life of the unfortunate Rosie Daniels who has been dealt a bad hand ever since high school, when her last name was still McClendon and her fate was first decided with Norman Daniels. Norman is a police officer but he’s also one of the most brutal, psychotic and abusive husbands to walk the earth. He resents Rosie, finding new ways to both humiliate and torture her for simple things such as reading a book he disproves of or leaving a smudged fingerprint on the bathroom mirror.  She’s survived his temper for 14 years until one day, while making their bed, a stray drop of blood changes everything. Rosie walks out of their miserable life together, leaving Rosie Daniels behind and transforming into Rosie McClendon once again. She seeks shelter in a large, bustling town and begins to push the reset button on her life. She purchases a framed oil painting, something old and unseen with the title Rose Madder scrawled across the back in charcoal. No one else can understand Rosie’s fascination with the painting, why she feels such a pull towards it or even why sometimes late at night it seems the subjects of the painting roam freely into her world. She’s happy for the first time in 14 years, she has a job and she has friends, Anna, Pam, Gert and Cynthia who are all members of the local Daughters and Sisters shelter for abused women that took Rosie in at the lowest point in her life. She has her very own apartment and even a new spark in her love life by the name of Bill Steiner. She has one more thing. She has Norman Daniels hot on her trail and he wants to talk to her up close…real close…and he’s willing to take down anyone who stands between them.

The beginning of this story punches you in the gut. Literally. The book opens on a scene where Rosie is crumpled in pain, laying in a pool of her own blood after one of Norman’s violent outbursts and trying to decide whether or not she’s losing their unborn child. This story is relentless, raw and unforgiving. Stephen King creates such a sympathetic character with Rosie that there is no way you can’t feel something for her. Her vulnerability, how terrified and how unprepared she is out in the real world are all such believable traits for a woman who has barely lived for 14 long years. Despite the quality of the storyline, this book had a large amount of grammatical errors such as “Expect” when he really meant “Except” and “Wadk” instead of “Walk”. However, I enjoyed the eerie dream quality this story took on, it blurred the lines between what was real and what was imagined, to the point where you almost couldn’t tell which was which. This book opened a doorway between reality and the painted world beyond, and I’d be willing to walk through and explore it several more times.