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After way too many years of quietly enduring her husband’s deadly abuse, something inside Rose Daniels convinces her that it’s time to leave –- to walk out the door with nothing but her purse, the clothes she’s wearing, and her husband Norman’s bank card. To go as far away as possible.
Rosie gets on a bus and goes to a far-away city, where a kind man at the bus station directs her to a local women’s shelter. There, Rosie starts her new life as Rosie McClendon. One day, she walks into a pawn shop in an attempt to sell the engagement ring that she discovers is worthless -– and her life changes once again. As she walks through the store, she spots a painting that she knows she must have. She meets a man who changes her image of men. And she gets a job that gives her freedom.
While Rosie is starting her new life, Norman refuses to give up on his old life, and he sets out in search of his wayward wife, not caring what he has to do to find Rosie and punish her one last time.
Rose Madder definitely isn’t on my list of my favorite Stephen King novels. While the story was often a page-turner, it was just a little too real and too gruesome for me. In this novel, King puts his standard eerie supernatural themes in the passenger’s seat and lets the real-life horrors get behind the wheel. There was just something about Rose Madder that made my stomach turn just a little too much. Maybe it was just the voice in my head that reminded me that situations like Rosie’s really do happen. Rose Madder isn’t an escaping-reality story. It’s more of a slap-in-the-face kind of story. And while it’s a good story, it’s not what King does best.
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