Reviews

Rose Madder by Stephen King

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ro_lux's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

hadeanstars's review against another edition

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2.0

This started well enough, a very simple tale of a woman running from an abusive husband, which was unpleasant to read about, but engaging, you want the titular Rose to escape and have a good life. And it was fine, even in spite of King's lacklustre and often primitive literary constructs, his awful tendency to describe women's qualities primarily through their breasts, and often cartoonishly over the top violence, but eventually it just became rather tedious in its ridiculously bad construction and its simplicity. It has the depth of a children's story, but with highly adult themes.

The other major issue was the implausibility of the novel's bad guy Norman. Quite how somebody so self-evidently psychotic could hold down a job in the police force is beyond me, but maybe I think too well of the police.

I think King is a decent storyteller, but not a great writer, if that makes sense, and this impression is rather degraded by the low-consciousness themes that he writes about. Some parts were okay - especially the dream/fanatasy sequences set in the Greek temple, which were actually quite good.

I read a couple of King novels when I was a teenager and cannot honestly remember what I thought about them. I will not bother reading any more. Two stars, because I managed to finish!