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An abused wife, Rose, flees her psychopath husband, Norman, who unfortunately for her is a cop, and starts a new life. Because this is a Stephen King novel, her husband comes after her… and she finds an odd painting in a pawn shop that calls to her, depicting a woman in a chiton in front of a temple, and which slowly reveals magical properties, both of a helpful and a dangerous nature.
The opening scenes of Rose’s marriage, and then her flight, are an astonishing piece of writing, horrifying and gripping and completely psychologically believable. So, warning for horrific violence against women (and also against men, eventually, as Norman starts taking out people standing between him and her.) Sure, most domestic abusers are not also serial/spree killers, but I regret to say that absolutely none of the horrifying violence he does to her within their marriage is stuff that doesn’t happen in real life.
This is an odd book, of parts that don’t quite mesh together and aren’t all equally well-done.
Rose herself is a wonderful character, and I loved all the parts that are just her fleeing, learning to be her own person, and exploring the magic of the painting. Unlike most thrillers with abused women, she actually goes to a women’s shelter. That part is also very well done and there are a number of great characters there. The one part of Rose’s story that didn’t quite work for me is her romance. On the one hand, I did like that finds love with a non-abusive guy. My problem is that he’s too idealized and doesn’t feel as real as a lot of other characters in the book – he feels like Rose’s wish-fulfillment reward rather than a real person.
There are a lot of sections from Norman’s POV. They are really unpleasant to read, for obvious reasons, and I ended up skimming them and reading just enough to keep track of what he was doing. Those could and should have been edited down to the absolute minimum. I often don’t mind King’s lack of editing – like, I was perfectly happy to read abou Rose decorating her apartment – but only when I like the characters, and there is absolutely nothing likable about Norman. He’s also not that interesting compared to other King villians. Like, Annie Wilkes is also hard to read, but she’s a great character with interesting motivations. Norman is just a horrible, vicious sociopath.
Then there’s the world of the painting. I don’t want to spoil it (though you can in comments) but it went in some directions I expected and some I didn’t. It’s a thing of power that is never really explained, but makes sense on its own terms, some drawn from our world’s myths, some original. It’s darker than I expected; helpful to Rose, in general, but a dangerous thing and not one that she controls. A lot of it has the same “wellspring of myth” sense that I got from parts of The Dark Tower and is explicit in Lisey’s Story. It feels both dreamlike and real, nightmarish but also a source of power that can be used for good, if you’re clever and well-meaning and determined and wise.
Those, of course, are the qualities of a fairy-tale heroine on a quest. Rose Madder has some interesting fairy-tale references as well as mythic ones; the gap between the prologue and the first chapter could be read as an incredibly dark take on “Sleeping Beauty,” in which the heroine rescues herself by means of a single drop of blood, though it comes from something much worse than the prick of a thorn. There’s a lot of red and roses in the story: Rose herself, roses, the painting called (or signed?) Rose Madder, the color “red madder,” the chiton, blood, pomegranate seeds. For a book that in some ways feels like two or even three books stuck together, the themes (as opposed to the plot and tone) are extremely coherent.
I liked it a lot but it’s an odd book and I’m sure not for everyone. King himself said somewhere that he didn’t think it succeeded, but the parts that work really work; it does feel like he was pushing at his limits as a writer, so maybe he felt like he was over-ambitious and failed. If nothing else, I bet he learned a lot from writing it. As I mentioned, I skimmed Norman’s POV as much as possible and would skip it entirely on a re-read. Lisey’s Story, in contrast, benefits from completely omitting the villain’s POV.
Rose Madder
The opening scenes of Rose’s marriage, and then her flight, are an astonishing piece of writing, horrifying and gripping and completely psychologically believable. So, warning for horrific violence against women (and also against men, eventually, as Norman starts taking out people standing between him and her.) Sure, most domestic abusers are not also serial/spree killers, but I regret to say that absolutely none of the horrifying violence he does to her within their marriage is stuff that doesn’t happen in real life.
This is an odd book, of parts that don’t quite mesh together and aren’t all equally well-done.
Rose herself is a wonderful character, and I loved all the parts that are just her fleeing, learning to be her own person, and exploring the magic of the painting. Unlike most thrillers with abused women, she actually goes to a women’s shelter. That part is also very well done and there are a number of great characters there. The one part of Rose’s story that didn’t quite work for me is her romance. On the one hand, I did like that finds love with a non-abusive guy. My problem is that he’s too idealized and doesn’t feel as real as a lot of other characters in the book – he feels like Rose’s wish-fulfillment reward rather than a real person.
There are a lot of sections from Norman’s POV. They are really unpleasant to read, for obvious reasons, and I ended up skimming them and reading just enough to keep track of what he was doing. Those could and should have been edited down to the absolute minimum. I often don’t mind King’s lack of editing – like, I was perfectly happy to read abou Rose decorating her apartment – but only when I like the characters, and there is absolutely nothing likable about Norman. He’s also not that interesting compared to other King villians. Like, Annie Wilkes is also hard to read, but she’s a great character with interesting motivations. Norman is just a horrible, vicious sociopath.
Then there’s the world of the painting. I don’t want to spoil it (though you can in comments) but it went in some directions I expected and some I didn’t. It’s a thing of power that is never really explained, but makes sense on its own terms, some drawn from our world’s myths, some original. It’s darker than I expected; helpful to Rose, in general, but a dangerous thing and not one that she controls. A lot of it has the same “wellspring of myth” sense that I got from parts of The Dark Tower and is explicit in Lisey’s Story. It feels both dreamlike and real, nightmarish but also a source of power that can be used for good, if you’re clever and well-meaning and determined and wise.
Those, of course, are the qualities of a fairy-tale heroine on a quest. Rose Madder has some interesting fairy-tale references as well as mythic ones; the gap between the prologue and the first chapter could be read as an incredibly dark take on “Sleeping Beauty,” in which the heroine rescues herself by means of a single drop of blood, though it comes from something much worse than the prick of a thorn. There’s a lot of red and roses in the story: Rose herself, roses, the painting called (or signed?) Rose Madder, the color “red madder,” the chiton, blood, pomegranate seeds. For a book that in some ways feels like two or even three books stuck together, the themes (as opposed to the plot and tone) are extremely coherent.
I liked it a lot but it’s an odd book and I’m sure not for everyone. King himself said somewhere that he didn’t think it succeeded, but the parts that work really work; it does feel like he was pushing at his limits as a writer, so maybe he felt like he was over-ambitious and failed. If nothing else, I bet he learned a lot from writing it. As I mentioned, I skimmed Norman’s POV as much as possible and would skip it entirely on a re-read. Lisey’s Story, in contrast, benefits from completely omitting the villain’s POV.
Rose Madder
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Norman aside, it's not about horrible people at all. Rose actually has a lot of support from a lot of different people, including a number of badass and awesome women, plus some nice men. (They don't all survive, but, well, it IS a King novel.) One of them (in the painting) is dangerous and scary, but… it's hard to describe without spoilers… a sort of mythic force where "good" and "evil" doesn't really apply. She's not the Furies, but along those lines.
That being said, Lisey's Story also deals a lot with healing and recovery (from grief, though there's also some abuse recovery her husband goes through) but has no villain POV and is a lot easier to take.
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Since I've got you on the line… Have you read the Dark Tower books? (Don't spoil me, I'm halfway through Book 5.) Is there anything Kingly you'd rec? I've read many but not all of his books up to about Misery - I mean the King-as-King books. The Bachman books I've read haven't done much for me.
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And oh yes, if I re-read, I'll skip Norman. I've read some of King's books often enough, you can tell looking at the spines where I'm prone to skip after the initial read. :-)
So, The Dark Tower. I'm following your posts, because I started the series about eight years ago, and just didn't keep going. I remember liking The Gunslinger and wanting to read the second book, but could not find it anywhere, so I bought the third book in anticipation and it just sat there. But it bothers me greatly that I haven't read them, because everything I know about them tells me they're the kind of Stephen King books I'm likely to enjoy.
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You should read Dark Tower. At least through book 2. It's very different from The Gunslinger but I think you'll like it. The characters and suspense are amazing, and parts are really numinous and beautiful. It also has a female character who on the one hand is one out of four questers, but on the other hand is incredibly badass in ways that only reveal themselves slowly and in a spoilery fashion. But she's definitely the equal of any of the male characters and is not sidelined for being female. Yet, anyway.
I have not read Green Mile but I really like "Shawshank Redemption" (admittedly I saw the movie first and its a favorite) so I know King can do a period prison story very well.
I also dropped King after Misery - I think he wrote a number of bad books after that. Like, I am not picking up either Dreamcatcher or Tommyknockers. But I'm really enjoying the post-bad-book-stretch books.
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ho-lee, though, I see what you mean about the writing in the early bits
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I am very much looking forward to your thoughts on the rest of the Dark Tower books.
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so we both like "king".
So, enjoy.
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However, it's not impossible. He pre-dates Rose finding the painting, but he probably doesn't pre-date the painting itself, and he's present when she finds it. The painting itself has magic that extends beyond what's directly associated with Rose, but there is a timey-wimey aspect which is that it was clearly meant for her to find and even has her name on it before she walks into the pawn shop and spots it.
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a lot of it was really good, like you said. I like Bill - or like that he exists because there is not enough of him to like or not like - if I consider him as a prize for Rose who deserves something nice for once, but not if I consider him as a not-all-men token who has to be in the book so that Rose can stand up for men's virtues against the scary goddess figure at the end.
also along the same lines, man I did not like the scene with the nice cop who explained to Rose about how she thinks she knows cops because of Norman but she doesn't really. her paranoia about them was pretty much entirely justified, I thought.
but I really really loved that the miscarriage, though not downplayed or forgotten, wasn't the breaking point for Rose or anywhere close to it. I cannot speak to psychological realism but I can't take narratives of abuse where the woman finally snaps because it's fine to do awful things to her but once he touches somebody else, that's it. I really appreciate that she left to save herself and not anybody else.
and I am not sure how I feel about Norman's backstory and issues, because I got the strong feeling that his particular sex-violence-trauma axis was deliberately chosen so that the kind of person who would enjoy reading him assaulting Rose would just plain not be able to get off on reading about what he does do. usually I don't assume I can guess authors' motives but this one I bet I am right. not sure if I think that was a good decision or not, if so. maybe.
edit: maybe it bugs me because I think there is some kind of THING among nice heterosexual men not being able to really imagine that someone who genuinely strongly desires women sexually also hates them and wants to hurt them. like the desire to believe that abusers of women are secretly impotent or secretly sexually repulsed by women is such a trope among straight guys of that sort who are anti-abuse but identify strongly with their own sexuality. I'm sure it's a real thing sometimes but not so much as these guys would like to believe.
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The #notallmen character, I thought, was the guy at the bus stop who directs Rose to the women's shelter, and turns out to be the ex-husband of the woman who runs it. That's a bit of a an unfair take, though, because he did feel like a real person even with his little page time, and I think he's got more of a purpose than that to show Rose that not all men are monsters. It's to show her (or, really, the readers) than relationships can begin and end without horrible or even any abuse ever being involved - that "not getting along" is a perfectly reasonable reason to break up.
I thought the abuse narrative (from Rose's POV) was incredibly realistic. It's not like that for every woman, but for the women for whom it is like that, King absolutely nails it.
I got the strong feeling that his particular sex-violence-trauma axis was deliberately chosen so that the kind of person who would enjoy reading him assaulting Rose would just plain not be able to get off on reading about what he does do.
I suspect the same thing, just because the book has a bit of a didactic aspect to it - not to educate onlookers, but to be potentially helpful to someone in a Rose-like situation. So yeah, I think King thought carefully about it and probably did do that on purpose.
I like his villains best when we either don't get their POV, or they're supernatural and somewhat unknowable, or both. I find his villain-POV on villains who are basically regular sociopaths to be pretty tiresome/unpleasant/skippable in general. I did like the Flagg POV in The Stand because Flagg is supernatural, partly unknown to both himself and the reader, and has bigger fish to fry than being sadistic because he likes it, so he's less one-note.
I don't know if it's a thing with male authors in general but there does seem to be a theme with King that misogynist villains are also (conflictedly) sexually repulsed by women or by sexuality in general. (And his man-on-man rapists are the same way - they're getting off on power and sadism, not sex.) I think the idea of genuinely sexually desiring women while also hating them as people is hard for people who don't feel that way to wrap their heads around. I know it exists but it's actually a little hard for me to understand also.
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I agree, strongly, about Norman's POV; I have a pretty high tolerance for violence but basically all of it really squicked me. Bill didn't bother me in the process of reading but I can definitely see what you mean and I think I like the idea that the painting/Rose Madder created him.
What really bothered me was that Rosie gave him the memory-erasing water without his permission. I mean that's not okay just because he's traumatized! She made the choice not to go into the stream and forget Norman, why doesn't he get the same choice?
Did you understand what was going on with the tree and the rages and the ending? It seemed to more or less make emotional sense to me but I didn't get it on any other level and I felt like I was supposed to.
(I have to admit that it was very cathartic to see Norman getting eaten by a giant spider, although I'm now trying to figure out how much of the magic and her persona is Greek mythology and how much King made up.)