Rambling Rose

by Calder Willingham

A southern family welcomes a precocious and enticing nineteen-year-old woman into their community only to learn that her unique capacity for love wreaks havoc on the town's carefully balanced social structure

Genres: Fiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Calder Willingham, (born Dec. 22, 1922, Atlanta, Ga.—died Feb. 19, 1995, Laconia, N.H.) U.S. novelist and screenwriter who, was lionized at the age of 24 after the publication of the explicit End as a Man (1947), a graphic and lurid account of life at a southern military school resembling South Carolina’s Citadel, where Willingham was enrolled for one year. The novel, which achieved commercial success after the publisher was unsuccessfully prosecuted for obscenity, was made into a film called The Strange One (1957). Willingham was grouped with such other young writers as Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote, all of whom employed the same gritty realism. His success was not repeated in his other novels, however, and he explored that theme in his last book, The Big Nickel (1975). In later years Willingham gained success as a screenwriter with such credits as Paths of Glory (1957), The Vikings (1958), One-Eyed Jacks (1961), The Graduate (1967), Little Big Man (1970), and Rambling Rose (1991), an adaptation of his same-titled 1972 novel. Shortly before his death he finished an original screenplay for Steven Spielberg.

Reviews

[Vrinda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny. Touching. Has a deeper thread of how ingrained patriarchy was in those times

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rambling Rose by Calder Willingham (Delacorte Press 1972)(Fiction) is true Southern fiction. It's rooted firmly in the coming of age genre on the "you won't believe the lessons I learned from observing the crazy grownups around me" Southern branch.

Author Calder Willingham is largely forgotten as an author and is not much better remembered as a screenwriter, although his screenwriting credits include "The Graduate," "Little Big Man," and "Spartacus." He was the favorite screenwriter of legendary film director Stanley Kubrick; the two collaborated on a number of films.

In Rambling Rose, a twelve-year-old southern boy tells a tale set in the 1930's of the year his parents took into their home the title character, a gorgeous young uneducated farm girl, to serve as a live-in nanny/housekeeper.

Though this book is a comedy, Calder Willingham can purely write some porn when he aims to. Within the first weeks of Rose joining the household, the narrator describes at great length watching Rose's attempted seduction of his father. This is followed a couple of weeks later by Rose climbing into the boy's bed at two a.m. knowing that he is naked. Several of the great mysteries of life are revealed to the boy in the ensuing chapters.

Though I enjoyed this story, Calder Willingham's tale was not at all what I had anticipated. My rating: 7/10, finished 11/1/13.

[Maia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this book for the first time when I was about 15, and didn't see what the big deal was. Then reread it after watching the movie on TV, and STILL don't see what the big deal is! (thou the actors did a pretty good job of glossing over that). It's basically a non-Jewish (and therefore, less smart, less funny) Portnoy's Complaint--without the mom figure, which makes it more boring and even less enthralling to a non-male, non-pubescent, nerdy-boy audience. The author clearly had/has issues, period.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this book a 3 because while I enjoyed the humor in it, as well as the descriptive way the author makes the time period come alive in the imagination, some of the sexual scenes (well, one in particular) struck me as distasteful. Also, I don't like how the author takes 20 pages to say something that should have only taken 2 or 3 at most... he just goes on and on and on, blathering unnecessarily, before finally getting to the point he began the chapter before. It's frustrating for me to read something like that.

[Ike Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was a teenager when I read this book so of-course I liked it then! I do not know how alluring I would find it today after having read some of the other reviews on here though!

[Vel Veeter]

On the one hand this book is both really funny and insightful in some significant ways; but on the other hand, it’s a kind of accidentally disturbing book than plays in some ordinary misogyny and casual sexual abuse. Fun!

There’s a movie version of this starring Laura Dern in the title role and Robert Duvall as the father, with Lukas Haas as the adolescent narrator. The novel takes place in Georgia during the Great Depression. Our narrator is an adolescent in a more or less well-off upper middle class family. His parent decide that in light of the Depression, they will take on a kind of ward, a teenage girl who will live with them, have some stability in her life, and be able to look for work and the next stages of her life. If you’re thinking that bringing in a 19 year old into the house of a middle-aged but attractive father and also a 13 year old boy, well your radar is accurately tuned. We find out very early that Rose is both incredibly naive, but also kind of preternaturally sexual. Look, I know. I know what you’re thinking, and you are correct. She is a screen on which to project the sexuality of the men in this book, and the book does know this, or least it more or less knows this. So the exercise of this throughout the book is pretty uncomfortable, and at times painful, especially when there’s an awkward and unfortunate sexual encounter between Rose and the narrator.

But at the same time, and this doesn’t make this novel complicated really, but unfortunate, is that there’s some really quality writing and insight happening here. If this novel had not been filmed, I bet there wouldn’t have been a reprint, and I bet we don’t see it in reprint any time soon.

[Chris Gager · Rating 3 out of 5]

I barely remember it but I think I read it many years ago. I was a big Calder Willingham fan. He wrote about sex. Haven't seen the movie. Seems like it might have been originally published earlier than 1972. Date read is a guess.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book around the time of the election... oof.