Words cannot express how much I hate Guy Woodhouse. Apparently there's a sequel, and I can only hope that Rosemary ensures her husband's painful, lingering death because no-one in the whole of literature deserves it like he does. What a bastard. He's the really horrifying thing in here - not the creepy apartment, not Satan's baby, not the smothering old-lady neighbours and their Satan-baby tea. It's Guy Woodhouse, and the way he hands over his wife, totally dismisses her rape and (apparently) dead child - all of which he helps to orchestrate - because it's something that Rosemary will get over easily enough(!) and will make him famous.

And the horrible thing is, he's not the only horrible person in this. It's the coven in general, and the well-meaning doctor who doesn't believe, and the sheer weight of manipulation all building up, and we know as we read that there's no way that Rosemary's escaping this horror that's been inflicted on her. And then there's that ending, because that's the final, awful betrayal, and Rosemary herself has a hand in it. This is such a creepy book - not perfect, because it does stray into histrionics and overdoing it at times, and it might be scarier if it were a bit subtler - but there's a reason it's a classic.