Son of Rosemary by Ira Levin

 

(hb; 1997: sequel to Rosemary’sBaby)

From the inside flap

“Son of Rosemary opens at the dawn of the new millennium—a time when human hope is shadowed by growing fear and uncertainty, and the world is in greatest need of a savior. It is here—against the glittering backdrop of New York City in 1999—that Rosemary is reunited with her son. It is also here that the battle between good and evil will be played out on a global scale—a struggle that will have frightening, far-reaching consequences, not only for Rosemary and her son but for all of humanity.”

 

Review

Son, like Rosemary’s Baby, is a hard-to-set-down, clever, and satirically devilish read. Thirty years have passed since the events of Rosemary’s, and Rosemary Reilly—then Rosemary Woodhouse—has spent twenty-seven of them in a Bramford cult-induced coma. Then the last member of the cult dies, just as Rosemary wakes, shortly to be reunited with her thirty-three-old son (Andy Castevet), head of God’s Children, a globally popular Christian peace movement. Andy and Rosemary’s coming-together is joyous, with Andy breaking with His father’s plans, something that didn’t sit well with Satan. Setpiece-sly murders begin, the smell of tannis—like that preceded the horrors of the previous novel—seeps into Rosemary’s investigations, and she begins to suspect something’s not right with Andy and his organization. . .

Levin, with his usual economical prose, keeps the thematic connective tissue taut and intriguing, maintaining the visual and plot cues of Rosemary’s. Son’s tone is updated and different than Rosemary’s, but it feels like a natural continuation of the first book, with an effective multi-twist finish that, with a lesser writer, might’ve galled me as a cheat ending, but with Son feels right. Worth reading, this.