‘Like so many unhappinesses, this one had begun with silence in the place of honest open talk…’
Do you ever get that thing where you spot a book on your bookshelf that you have absolutely no recollection of buying? I don’t know how Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin found its way into my house, but one day I saw it winking up at me when scanning the bookshelf, and it seemed like the right time to read it. Roman Polanski’s film is a horror masterpiece of course, but enough time had passed since I last saw it that I couldn’t remember much about it, save for the iconic conclusion, which still haunts me.
Rosemary is an expectant mother living in a high class New York apartment with her actor partner Guy. Plagued by strange nightmares and overbearing neighbours, Rosemary begins to suspect that something sinister is happening.
Make no mistake, this is a nasty, shocking work that paved the way for a nasty, shocking film. Having Rosemary as the narrator ensures that we are never really sure if her worst fears are merely imagined or gruesomely real until the end of the novel, and it is this slow build of tension and suspense that makes Rosemary’s Baby such a compelling read.
I knew nothing of author Ira Levin going in, but his simple writing style allows the story to breath on its own terms, and there are enough twists and turns that it barely mattered that I already knew what was going to happen. There is still plenty here to shock, even after all these years.
As someone with a serious fear of the occult thanks to a Catholic upbringing, I found the chilling mundanity of Rosemary’s downfall to be just as terrifying written down as it is on film. Rosemary’s Baby is not a long novel, nor is it particularly challenging, but it is immensely entertaining and undoubtedly still holds a dark power over the reader. If you should happen upon it on your own bookshelf then I suggest you give it a try. Oh, and be careful of your neighbours…