(EMAAN UMER: 371551) ROSE MADDER:

STEPHEN KING AT HIS AVERAGE

Would I call myself a self-proclaimed elitist intellectual who’s recently been reading books for
information sources instead of the escapism of a brightly-colored universe every novel offers? It’d been
long since I’d felt the scrapes of the familiar yellow paper and I’d grown extremely critical over the years
since my last light reading. So, it came to me as a surprise when, upon a casual recommendation of
Stephen King’s Rose Madder, I devoured the book in two days. Five and one-star reviews are usually
biased. They’re decked to the brim with praises or faults, often lacking the impartiality of three-star
ones. Stephen King is no literary author, and his works at best seem like a leisurely read one does during
travel.

Here’s my three-star review:

Rose Madder is a psychological thriller that follows a woman, Rose Daniels, who suddenly flees her
abusive marriage of fourteen years. This impulsive action gives way to a mundane day in her life when
she notices a drop of blood on her bedsheets. It had dripped from her nose the night before, when her
vicious husband, Norman Daniels, had punched her for spilling iced tea on him. The realization that the
abuse may someday end her becomes her driving force as she escapes with her husband’s ATM card
that day. Then follow a sequence of events where our protagonist settles in another city with a group of
organization of women sharing her experiences while Norman relentlessly pursues her.

At best, King is a masterful storyteller. He has infused this book with a distinct sense of good and evil,
right and wrong. You can immediately recognize the purpose of each character and the role they play in
moving the plot along. While we all like a good horror story in bed, I think it’s an unsaid mutual
agreement that cases, like domestic abuse, an unknown stalker, rape, and kidnapping, that hit close to
reality are the ones that genuinely terrify us and Stephen King has used that hand.

Norman Daniels is spine-chillingly written. It is clear that King has poke and prodded into an average
racist, misogynistic, and rapist mind, picking apart their sadistic thoughts and manifested it into Norman.
The issue? He is paper thin. They are no redeeming qualities or any saving grace. A human has a morally
ambiguous, multi-layered thought process and we are phased through your unsympathetic abusive man
to a completely delusional, raving mad policeman. Which brings up an unanswered question: What
compelled Rose to stay for 14 years with someone so fully devoid of morals?

Maybe it was better. His detachment from ground reality was what made it tolerable to read. It was
what made me pick the book back up. Him and Rose’s resilience.

Besides the one-dimensional characters, a fantasy element was intangibly introduced through a painting
that Rose buys in an antique shop. However, these mystical elements awkwardly juxtapose with a
woman-on-the-run thriller that render the terrifying element hollow.

All in all, Rose is the best characterization of a woman that King's managed thus far: A sympathetic lead
who doesn’t indulge in melodrama or denial. It's hard not to get involved in Rosie's problems as she runs
from a horrifically abusive marriage. He gives us the chance to watch her grow and change, and to set
the stage for what will happen next.
If you’re hesitant to try out King’s more terrifying books like IT, The Stand or Survivor Type, but want to
try out his writing anyway, Rose Madder is for you.

My favorite quote from the book:

“The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real
world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep.”