Book Review: Stephen King's Rose Madder

As an avid Stephen King fan, Rose Madder is (in my opinion) one of his best works. My fiancé and I just finished reading it and we were literally on the edges of our seats from start to finish. It is the story of a woman who after fourteen years finds the courage to flee from her horribly abusive marriage and start a new life. It possesses many of the characteristics of your typical cat-and-mouse thriller, yet is unique and captivating throughout. The characters are extremely well developed to a point where you feel like you actually know them. The following is a brief synopsis of the book (I was careful not to include any spoilers for those of you who plan on reading it, but I should warn you that the novel contains some disturbing subject matter and is not for the lighthearted):

Rose Daniels sits fearfully huddled on the floor in the corner of her living room, struggling to breathe. As she glances around, she sees the torn-up remnants of the romance novel that she was reading before her husband came home and violently ridded her of it. She knew that he did not like her reading "that junk," as he referred to it, but she did not think that doing so would lead to this. If she could have foreseen this, she never would have picked up the damned thing in the first place. He had hit her many times in the past, but this was by far the worst. This time she was pregnant; "was" being the operative word as she felt streams of blood trickling down her legs. In the next room she could hear her husband, Norman on the phone telling the 911 operator to send an ambulance to their home because his wife had taken a nasty fall down the stairs. He sounded sincere enough on the phone, but she knew it was all an act. Norman was a police officer and he knew that if he sounded anything but terribly worried while placing the 911 call, suspicions might arise. As she sits there hoping against hope that the baby will be alright somehow, her husband enters the room with a sandwich in hand and a dismayed look upon his face. He was annoyed at her for having to make his own dinner. After finishing the last bites of his sandwich, he kneels over and begins to drag her to the foot of the stairs to corroborate the lie that he told the operator. As Rose looks into her husband's inhuman eyes, she feels the hate and contempt welling up inside her. She briefly entertains the thought of telling the doctors what really happened; maybe they will be able to help her. The thought is quickly cast aside by the sharp pain in her hands as Norman squeezes them. Almost as if he had read her mind, he warned her to tell the same story that he had or he would kill her. Coming from Norman, she knew that it was not an empty threat and she felt it best to go along with it.

Flash forward to nine years, two hospitalizations and many beatings later. Rose is standing above her bed, intently staring at a blood droplet on her pillowcase. As she looks at the little scarlet speck, she remembers all of the times that he hurt her over the last fourteen years. She thinks of all of the times that she stood in the steamy dark shower for hours in hopes of alleviating some of the pain; all of the times that she sat in the corner after the beatings, taking small, shallow breaths because doing anything else brought immense pain. She recalls the ominous smile that that he makes just before biting her. She knows that Norman would kill her if she left him, but she knew that there was an equal chance that he would eventually kill her if she stood. She knew that Norman would be at work for at least a few hours longer. As if possessed by an unknown force, Rose got dressed, grabbed her husband's ATM card and bolted out the door. She had no idea where she was going, but she was sure of one thing... no matter where she ended up, it could not have been worse that where she was and where she had been for the last fourteen years.

As Rose embarks on her journey towards freedom, her outraged monster of a husband relentlessly tracks her. To keep from divulging to much information, I am going to stop here, but I highly recommend reading this one. It is a real nail-biter and impossible to put down.