I first read Rosemary’s Baby when I was a young teenager, and rereading it at 35—especially now that I’m an author myself—was an entirely different experience.
I love Ira Levin’s craft. I’m a sucker for foreshadowing (I use a lot of it in my own writing), and this book is basically a masterclass in how to do it without screaming, “THIS IS A CLUE.”
Levin tells you what is happening over and over again.
You just don’t realize he’s telling you.
A can of Red Devil paint remover. Tannis root. Guy’s increasingly strange behavior. Rosemary’s sister dreaming that something happened to her. The bizarre pregnancy cravings. Even the baby “kicking like a demon.”
On a reread, some of the foreshadowing is almost funny because Levin is practically handing you the answer while disguising it as ordinary description, figurative language, or coincidence.
That might be my favorite thing about the novel:
The clues aren’t hidden; their meaning is.
I also appreciated Rosemary herself much more this time around.
Sometimes I struggle with women written by male authors, particularly in older novels, because they can feel like someone’s idea of a woman rather than an actual woman. I didn’t have that problem here.
Rosemary felt human.
And having now experienced pregnancy myself, there were parts of her pregnancy—and the way the people around her manipulated her—that hit VERY differently than they did when I was a teenager.
The horror also isn’t simply, Satan is scary.
Some of the most disturbing parts are incredibly human: isolation, medical authority being used against Rosemary, people convincing her not to trust what her own body is telling her, and a husband who repeatedly chooses his own ambition over his wife’s safety.
Guy somehow became even worse on my reread.
Satan is Satan.
Guy had options.
And the ending still works.
Rosemary discovering exactly what her baby is and still having that complicated, instinctive response to him is far more interesting to me than a simple good-versus-evil ending.
My only theological complaint:
Ira, you can stop capitalizing He/Him/His for Satan and his offspring now.
Wrong Son, bro.
(Even if I do understand the craft note.)
Five stars.
I came back because I remembered loving Rosemary’s Baby. I finished it appreciating just how carefully it was constructed.
This is the kind of book that rewards being read twice.
