Rosemary's Baby

By: Ira Levin

Narrated by: Mia Farrow

Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's Summary

She is a housewife: young, healthy, blissfully happy. He is an actor: charismatic and ambitious. The spacious, sun-filled apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side is their dream home, a dream that turns into an unspeakable nightmare.

Enter the chilling world of Ira Levin, where terror is as near as your new neighbors and where evil wears the most innocent face of all.

©1967 Ira Levin (P)2005 HarperCollinsPublishers, Inc.

Here Be Witches

Mia Farrow does a fine job of narrating this novel, as well as putting her own spin on the various characters' voices. Her performance of Minnie Castevet is a highlight--she manages to make her sound simultaneously comical and frightening. Despite having seen the film many times, it was great fun to listen to this audiobook and to picture oneself in poor Rosemary's shoes: Is she suffering from a pregnancy-induced paranoia, or are these neighbors of hers part of a witch's coven?

14 of 16 people found this review helpful

Well Written, Great Fun

I liked this audio book. The narrator, who also starred in the movie, does a great job. The story is 70's horror fun. Well written. Story about a witches coven living in an apartment building and they want Rosemary's baby. You've probably seen the old movie but the book is much better. Spooky and a little weird and good listen!!!!!!

9 of 11 people found this review helpful

Excellent reading of a classic

This audiobook is even better than the movie and even more enjoyable for being read by Mia Farrow.

14 of 19 people found this review helpful

Mia Farrow Breathes New Life Into Levin's Baby

I used to give full credit for the wonder of the film version of Ira Levin's, "Rosemary's Baby," to Roman Polanski alone. Now having heard Mia Farrow's narration, I am , for the first time, able to really enjoy the book. Levin's book always seemed to me to be the barest of bones, and left me, like so many horror novels, feeling dissatisfied in the extreme.

Well, my hat is off to Mia Farrow, who manages to bring enough of her Rosemary Woodhouse magic to give this thin volume much more excitement than I ever thought it could have. To me, it is like a different book; a book I now look forward to listening to again. I now actually feel quite enthusiastic about it. If you are considering downloading this, please do...don't bother with the print edition. Let Mia Farrow charm you and run away with your imagination. In my humble opinion, she elevates this to the highest level it will ever reach, off the screen. What a delight!

6 of 9 people found this review helpful

story was good, the narrator wasn't too impressive

The narrator kept the voice of the characters for narration portions, it's pretty noticeable. Otherwise a good story

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Great Horror Classic

This book is so real and so well written that I can just imagine myself watching the book instead of just listening to it. Ira Levin is one of my favorite authors and with good reason - The Stepford Wives, A Kiss Before Dying. All of these books were made into movies and the movies were as good as the books.

The fun thing is the narrator being Mia Farrow and also starring in the movie. Makes this even better because she acts the book.

Worth the credit or the dollars. Great read, great listen, great movie.

The Baby

Excellent job by narrator Mia. I saw the movie years ago and enjoyed her reading of this book.

Deliciously creepy!

As a huge fan of the film, I was thrilled that it was faithful to the book. The tension builds slowly and with increasing anxiety. Quite effective!! Mia Farrow delivers a stellar performance.

Hail Mia! Hail Ira!

This is excellent... and Mia Farrow's performance is brilliant. I understand now why this novel was the bestselling novel of 1960s.

Absolutely amazing!

The novel does not disappoint at all, quite the opposite. Since I watched the movie so many times, it is impossible to tear them both apart. But I can imagine they work pretty well isolated from each other, but even better in a continuum. As you listen, it’s impossible not to associate Mia Farrow’s unique performance with the imagery, the set, the whole atmosphere of the movie. And the novel better explains certain passages that were not as developed in the movie. To put it blankly, the movie was incredible, the novel is absolutely amazing and Mia Farrow’s performance of innocent, somewhat shy, and yet, very lovely, fragile and yet incredibly strong (even though with no awareness regarding her own strength) Rosemary is an absolute delight! The tones and pitches she is able to carefully display throughout the narrative are undoubtedly the work of an extremely intelligent and sensitive artist, with a performance so unique and yet very realistic (SPOILER ALERT:

if you can apply such word to a story in which a woman is expecting the son of Satan.).

And in a very strange way, the author ends up bringing up themes of utmost relevance such as the burden of a patriarchal society upon women, the price one might pay for putting a blind eye not only to his/her instincts, but to evidence as well, the stigma regarding any woman’s allegedly “inappropriate” behaviour and the medicalisation of such in order to delegitimise her thoughts and opinions and how deceiving and dangerous can a mother’s love and inner expectations for her children be. It’s the stuff from which sociopaths, or

(SPOILER ALERT:)

Satan’s son in this particular case, are made of.

It is remarkable that so many years laters the novel is still so significant to women (and the matter regarding women’s rights and their everyday castration, or, to better put it: histerectomia and lobotomisation) and to society as well (by highlighting how many men try to lobotomise their espouses - and many other women - every single day, and how many espouses let them because the truth is hard to swallow, much harder than tannis root, and why would one swallow something that would take them away of their comfort zone, of what is expected of them? Rosemery tries, but eventually, fails. Not only because of other’s discouraging of her opinions, alarm and behaviour, but because once a baby is in the picture, it is very hard NOT to look the other way, not to feel guilty for doing the unexpected, and to actually admit to yourself that “Well, so much for motherhood! I literally - or not so literally - gave birth to the devil!”).

It is still such a modern book, to hell with the sanctity of the Church, that’s easy to mess up with, many books have done it. But this book dares to break with the sanctity of motherhood, parenting and the whole “how delightful it is to have a baby”, as well as many mothers’ deliberate blindness regarding their own children (and the possible consequences it may have). “Oh boy, boy...” the possible extent of its backfire!

1 of 2 people found this review helpful