I totally stayed up reading this book way past when I should have been asleep (sorry BF!). Once I got into it I just couldn't put it down.
First of all there were a few reasons I wanted to read it.
One as everyone knows it's a bit of a classic and the fact that it's out of print in Australia made it just that more intriguing.
Two, whenever I look up famous people born on my birthday for a long time all I ever got was Mia Farrow. Since up to this point all I knew of her was the fact that she was married to Woody Allen and we know that didn't end well I was curious to see the movie she is so famous for. But I promised myself to read the book before I saw the movie.
Three I love weird and wonderful books just as much as those based in reality, and this seemed the perfect book to read, having heard so much about it and never actually going out and reading it.
We are introduced to Rosemary and her actor husband Guy. They've just moved into a Gothic style apartment in New York which is notorious for some creepy behaviour in the last hundred years but it's a great place with 2 bedrooms so what the heck?
Everything is pretty good for a while, they meet some neighbours, Guy lands a great part on TV but Rosemary begins to feel distant from her husband and she has some odd hallucinations. Guy decides he'd also like to have a baby and very soon after some forced copulation (she was passed out! There are no words to describe the wrongness) they've got a bun in the oven.
To tell much more would ruin the enjoyment of reading the novel and I really recommend it. The way Levin builds the suspense is tingling and I honestly couldn't put it down. The writing is simple but that's the way the book works. You're learning every little twist along the way with Rosemary and you sometimes wonder if she is losing her mind or what the hell is going on.
It was written in 1967 and the book does not date that much. There were a few sexist issues (most notably the rape) but it is still a good read.
There is a sequel book which was written in 1997 by Levin, which I read an excerpt of but I'm not too sure about it. May be interesting just for curiosity's sake.
