Rose Madder
- 487
- Pages
- about 9 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Rose Madder” frightens most where nothing is supernatural: a woman leaves a violent husband, and he comes looking. The abuse is shown without mercy from the first chapter, and readers repeatedly warn how hard it is to take; the real horror lies inside the husband’s head. Some lose interest once the fantastic element, drawn from Greek myth, takes over midway. For those who can stomach the subject, a tense, moving escape story.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Rose Madder is a horror/fantasy novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1995. It deals with the effects of domestic violence and, unusually for a King novel, relies for its fantastic element on Greek mythology. In his memoir, On Writing, King states that Rose Madder and Insomnia are "stiff, trying-too-hard novels."
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.2 across 255 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 63% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Horror average of 7.5. That is how 7.3 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.4 | 32 | 13% |
| Hardcover | 7.0 | 223 | 88% |
Frequently asked
How long is Rose Madder?
It has 487 pages — longer than 73% of the ranked books in Horror.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Horror — with scores between 7.2 and 7.9, closest to this book.
