I’ll try to keep the cursing to a minimum, but I really, really, really hate it when I pick up a book that looks really good and am disappointed. This book had real promise and it delivered on very little.

Why did I read Rose Red?
Well, it’s Ruin13’s fault of course. We got this book in, 70 copies, with a sticker on the front that read "World Premier Movie Event Stephen King’s Rose Red February ABC." Ruin13 alerted me to it as something of interest. It’s supposed to be an actual diary of a woman who lived in a haunted house and the author listed in Books In Print is the parapsychologist who supposedly studied the diary and at the end, notes that she is going into the house to study it. Imagine a dairy written by someone who lived say in Hill House (from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.) And the mere fact that we got in 70 copies of this book signifies something. I was so intrigued that I borrowed the book on Friday and here it is Sunday night and I have finished it. What a waste of a weekend.

Well, the weekend wasn’t a total waste. I bought a new desk and I had a couple of good meals. Spent quality time with my husband. Watched a good movie. I guess just the reading part was a waste.

Why a waste?
First, let me dispel any idea that you had about this being an authentic diary. Who ever wrote this wasn’t much of a dairiest him or herself. At one point in the book it reads "so it was on a perfectly still night, three days later…" Nobody writes this in their diary. They know what day it is. I wouldn’t have blinked if the line had read "It took me three days to convince him but finally today …" (See, I don’t want to ruin the story for you if you choose to drag yourself through this monstrosity.) There are a couple of other things. The diarist talks about anticipating the arrival of radio as if she knows what it will be like. Did you, before you had been on the Internet, completely understand what that would be like? I didn’t and I had all the radio and TV analogies to work with. "Ellen" also talks about things she shouldn’t know about (like Freud) and things she shouldn't talk about (like sex – this is the Victorian era, remember.) So, not a diary.

Not placed securely in it’s time either. I could have forgiven the fake diary format if it had been reasonably well researched. There is some interesting research, like the aside about the regrading of Seattle’s streets which I know to have happened. However, the glaring error of her constant fascination with sex sucked all the suspension of disbelief out of this book. I recently read Women’s Westward Diaries and one of the things commented on was how these women wouldn’t discuss anything sex related up to and including imminent birth. So why is "Ellen" constantly going on (in detail) about her husband’s appetites and, later, their orgies with her maid? A) It’s out of character. B) It’s gratuitous. C) It detracts form the plot. What plot there is.

Not consistent. Continuity, what’s that? Ok, I understand that in a diary spanning decades the writer’s opinions are due to change or at least waver, so when "Ellen’s" thoughts on her husband waffle I don’t mind much. But when somebody’s dead? Baby, they’re dead. Yes, kiddies, the author killed off a character and reported it on page 73. About half way through the book (I can’t find the page now) he is reported as alive and in jail. So what is it? Dead or in jail? I don’t care which, but it can’t be both.

Not scary. This is actually the biggest sin in my point of view. I expected to see the slow disintegration of the main character due to the odd things happening in the house a la Haunting of Hill House (1963 film or book, you choose.) We don’t get that. The scariest moments are not delivered by actual hair raising events, but by the evil that men do. The evil of the men who seem to feel it their duty to run around raping maids and spying on guests through one way mirrors and spy holes conveniently located over beds. There is a chilling spot just over half way involving a séance, but it’s not worth reading the book for. Here we are with a possessed house built on a Native American burial ground that demands that its mistress keep adding onto it (what was the name of the shotgun heiress who did just that?) and occasionally steals people, and it’s not scary? By the end the house was rearranging itself and I was trying to figure out how many pages I had to go before I could start writing this review.

And just what makes me think Ol Missa King be involved?
A turn of phrase here and there. An inconsistent grasp of detail. The classic King set up of bad guy and minions vs band of good guys fighting back. A liberal borrowing of actual history. The use non-white Americans as "contacts with the other side." I wrote a paper in college on how King sets up his books and this one fits into that structure perfectly. But there’s no huge shoot ‘em all ending which I am heartily glad for. I hate it when King writes himself into a corner and just kills everybody. And if it isn’t King, it’s somebody who really wants to be him when they grow up. One only hopes that they learn to write too.

If you’d like the read some excepts they’re posted on the web at www.beaumontuniversity.net a fictitious university look for Joyce Reardon, paranomal studies and keep in mind that the excepts are the peaks, not the valleys. I was just talking to my husband about how difficult it is to make a story interesting when it’s written in diary form. What you gain in the interior monologue of your main character you lose in distance from the actual events. Don’t read the book. Or read it knowing it’s crap. It might be easier to take then.

(I've just had a conspiracy thought which isn't that conspiratorial. The book was published by Hyperion which is owned by Disney. The movie is airing on ABC, which is owned by Disney. Could this be the new thing in marketing? I hope not. Bad books won't sell anything.)


Recommended: No