Despite A Few Thorns, King’s New Book Is A ‘Rose’

“Rose Madder” By Stephen King (Viking, $25.95, 420 pages)

“Rose Madder,” the title of Stephen King’s 29th novel, refers of course to the reddish pigment used in painting, on which depend important details of the novel’s scary plot.

But “Rose Madder” also sums up what the novel’s heroine feels when she notices “a single drop of blood, no larger than a dime” on the sheet near her pillow while she is making the bed.

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.

Now while this may well be an unpleasant prospect, it is hardly the horrifying stuff of a typical Stephen King novel. After all, what more can Norman do than drag Rose back to where she was trapped before?

The threat to Rose isn’t even as acute as the less-than-world-ending plights of the heroines in “Gerald’s Game” and “Dolores Claiborne,” two recent books by King whose focus on the psychology of sexual abuse “Rose Madder” shares. Or at least the menace seems limited when we first meet Rose’s husband.

But we should trust King not to leave things only modestly threatening. Before very long, Norman seems capable of ending several people’s worlds.

First, King pumps him up to be a maniac who not only murders people who thwart him but also bites them and eats their parts, a homage to Hannibal Lecter underlined by a character who mentions Thomas Harris’ “Silence of the Lambs.”

Then, just as Norman begins to seem too monstrous to be credible, 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 King’s more familiar mannerisms: his habit of identifying his characters and situations with references to popculture 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 selfrespect.

And if 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” King has a rousing story when he needs one and when he doesn’t.