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An abused woman gets revenge on her husband
in a very unusual way.
Synopsis
The spot of blood reminds Rose
Daniels of the punch in the nose her husband, Norman, gave her the
previous evening when she spilled some iced tea on his hand. Remembering
this punch makes her think of all the beatings she has suffered over the
14 years of her marriage, and in particular of the one in the midsection
that ended her pregnancy. These memories make her angry. They make Rose
madder and madder.
So she finally
gets up the courage to walk out on Norman. While he's at work, she finds
his bank card, withdraws $350 from an ATM and takes a bus to a city
several hours to the west. There, she makes her way to a shelter for
battered women, gets counseling, meets a nice man, discovers her talent at
reading aloud for recorded books and begins a happier new
life.
Yet this is no bittersweet
comedy like Anne Tyler's recent "Ladder of Years." As Rose settles into
her new routine, the narrative viewpoint switches to Norman Daniels, who
is also getting madder and madder. He doesn't like it at all that Rose has
left him, and he particularly resents her audacity in taking his bank
card. He intends to track Rose down and give her a talking to "up close,"
as he likes to put it. Since he is a police detective highly expert at
tracking people, he seems likely to hunt Rose down.
Just as Norman begins to seem too monstrous to be
credible, Mr. King adds a mythic dimension to his plot. This is done quite
cleverly. Rose visits a pawnshop to sell her wedding ring, which Norman
has told her cost the price of a new car. As she absorbs the news that the
ring is almost worthless, her eye falls on an amateurish painting that
attracts her powerfully. She trades her ring for it, discovers that its
creator's name is Rose Madder and takes it home with her. After hanging it
on the wall of her room, she notices that it has begun to change in
peculiar ways. Soon she finds herself able to enter the world it depicts.
Here she gets caught in an eerie play of mythic forces that reflect and
eventually resolve the conflict between her and her
husband.
Some of this subplot
seems forced, which is hardly surprising in light of how far-fetched it
is. Also annoying are several of Mr. King's more familiar mannerisms: his
habit of identifying his characters and situations with references to
pop-culture cliches instead of taking the trouble to describe them
freshly, and his insistence on spelling out every implication of his plot
to the point where nothing is left to the unspoken subtext. And every so
often you are made a little uneasy by how much he seems to relish being
inside the head of his racist, misogynist, psychopathic
villain.
But "Rose Madder" is
rarely dull. It builds to a vivid climax. Norman's insane misogyny is
balanced by a sensitive portrayal of the way battered women recover their
self-respect. And if Mr. King occasionally lays his story on a little
thick, one can forgive him. As Rose's brutal husband reflects while he
pieces together the false identity under which he plans to infiltrate his
runaway wife's new world, "it was better to have a story and not need one
than to need one and not have one." In "Rose Madder" Mr. King has a
rousing story when he needs one and when he doesn't.
-- Christopher
Lehmann-Haupt, New York
Times |
