Rosemary's Baby

[cornerofmadness]

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I had to read a book published the year I was born for a challenge and I picked this, even knowing how it ends because I've seen the movie countless times. I expected to be half bored as a result and boy was I wrong. The book is surprisingly engaging (even accounting for the 60s era misogyny in regards to how Rosemary is treated by every man in this book, like a fragile too dumb to know anything. Also trigger warnings for dubious sexual consent within a marriage)

Rosemary sees moving into a historic apartment building as a huge bonus (I'm with her there, love that sort of thing) and the strange neighbors are just that, a little quirky. She and her husband Guy are getting by on his commercial residuals but he's still looking for his big break. Soon after moving in he gets it. He even agrees to having a child which is what she wants.

Well one drunken party/weird dream later, Rosemary finds out Guy had rough sex with her unconscious body (At least she was pissed about it but forgives him for being too drunk to know better.) Now of course reading this 50 years after the fact, I know what the readers of the time wouldn't have known about the weird neighbors, Guy's motivation and just who else was in that bedroom with Rosemary.

Rosemary wins zero points with me, however, for being so easily manipulated by her doctor who warns her to never speak to her other pregnant and/or already mother friends because 'they know nothing' and 'every pregnancy is different.' She doesn't go for another opinion in spite of being bullied into having Dr Saperstein and that she is in intense pain and losing drastic amounts of weight. (She is at best naive, at worse, not very bright).

Rosemary doesn't have much agency and when she tries to grab some it doesn't go well (not too shocking for a story written when it was). On the plus side Levin slowly ramps up the tension and you get the spooky feeling everything is not right as you go along.

I was surprised at how much I actually liked it. I did think the ending was on the lame side though.



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