I love Rose Madder!

[J.T. Adams]

One of my fav's, very underrated/underappreciated novel.

[91rewoT]

I reread it about a year ago - first time since it was first released - forgot what a wonderful story it is! Will definitely read it again.

[lindaterryhotnsxy2]

This book. There's not nearly enough words in my vocabulary that I could use to even begin to describe the way I feel about this book. Here is my best effort to share with all of you the way this book touched my life and managed to become my singular favorite King work.
My father purchased it (in the original hard copy) as a "feel better" gift shortly after I left my abusive (ex)husband. He had no idea what it was, only that it was the latest Stephen King and if anything would do as a "pick-me-up" it was that. I had never heard of it. Being me, I left it to sit on my dresser for the day as I left for work. When I came home that evening, after the before bed rituals including such wonderful things as prayers & teeth brushing, I picked up my present, turned on the lamp beside my rented bed and prepared for an adventure courtesy of Mr. King's vivid imagination. Little did I know what I was getting into.
It was like he stole a peek into my my life! I nearly thought to wonder if perchance even "I" might be made up, but that would just be silly now wouldn't it? Alright, just a silly coincidence. I can admit it. For one thing, the name is all wrong.
There was more though. So much more.
Over the next few days as I continued to read this adventure there were a series of rain storms in the early evening. Great pounding things that made your heart jump with each crash and boom. I barely heard them. What I heard instead? Crickets. Not the great hordes of them but they were there. It was just as Rose heard her first cricket chirrup. "Alright Mr. King, I've got a sense of humor but you are seriously pushing your luck", I thought to myself. I heard them (and only in my room, and no one else in the whole house ever heard them either) all the length of that bizarre, too close to home book. Only at night when I was engrossed in that wonderful book. Never in the morning or any other time of day. I searched my room from top to bottom daily. Trying to find the silly things to put them back outside where they belonged. No luck.
In the month or so that it took me to complete this work ( I was only managing an hour or so per day) my Step mother decided to "treat" me and purchased pictures at a swap meet for the walls of my little room. The one she decided to hang across the room at the foot of my bed was this wonderful oil painting of a hillside in what I can only assume was spring. Bright green grass, the suggestion of fog lifting, a hint of a building way in the distance. Well, the day after she decorated my room, Little Rosie bought her own picture. This was getting to be just too much! I had to finish the book. I just had to make sure I wasn't stuck in those pages somewhere. There were just too many "little coincidences" for my taste. I can admit it. I was petrified!
Well, of course, I wasn't in the book.
My painting never changed.
The day I closed the cover on the last page the cricket was found. Dead as a doorknob. Right inside my closet door.
I know it was just a lot of coincidences, but that story. Oh that story. I will always have chills when I open her cover. When I open any of Stephen Kings works. He gets it. I'm so very glad he is who he is and he does what he does. I'm even more glad that he's chosen to share it with the world. Even if sometimes it scares the bejebers out of me.
And all of this is my way of saying "I love this book" too.