Roused by a single drop of blood, Rosie Daniels wakes up to the chilling realisation that her husband is going to kill her. And she takes flight – with his credit card.Alone in a strange city, Rosie begins to build a new she meets Bill Steiner and she finds an old junk shop painting, “Rose Madder,” which strangely seems to want her as much as she wants it.But it’s hard for Rosie not to keep looking over her shoulder. Rose-maddened and on the rampage, Norman is a corrupt cop with a dog’s instinct for tracking people. And he’s getting close. Rosie can feel just how close he is getting…A brilliant dark-hued fable of gender wars, a haunting love story, and a hold-your-breath triumph of suspense, “Rose Madder” is Stephen King at his electrifying best.
I’m a horror fan, but I honestly haven’t read all that much King. I loved The Shining, but my husband read IT and said it was an insane slog with a creepy group child sex scene….so I passed. I was on the r/horrorlit subreddit (great place to find thrillers and horror books by the way) and someone asked for horror recs where the theme was basically “Good for her!” aka wronged women getting revenge. I’m ALWAYS down for that genre, and when I saw Rose Madder come up repeatedly, I decided to read it.
First things first- the plot is solid and Rose is a great character. It’s a really good DV revenge horror novel. It’s the writing choices that really made me feel like I needed a shower after reading. First off, I get that bad guys are racist and sexist but good GOD the amount of racial slurs the bad guy tosses out in his internal monologue just feels like King really likes the n-word. Also he’s obsessed with describing women’s breasts. Doesn’t even need to be plot relevant or an attractive woman. Alllllll the breasts are tenderly described.
There’s side character who works at a DV shelter and teaches the women self-defense. Awesome right? Well, King REALLY wants you to know that she’s black, fat, and has giant hips and breasts. And he doesn’t want you to forget it, so he goes into CREEPY detail every time she appears. A scene where a black woman beats the shit out of a white supremacist sexist man should be awesome right? Right??? I swear it felt like I was reading a fetish scene. It was deeply uncomfortable. Thank you King, it definitely was important that we knew every bounce of her fat, black, breasts and hips as she did so. Not creepy at all.
Honestly I was considering reading Misery next, but Rose Madder really turned me off of King’s work. There’s a lot of great modern horror out there that won’t feel like the author is writing all the women one-handed.
