![]() ![]() He glimpses strange auras around people that trail off into the sky like strings (or, as he comes to think of them, as lifelines) then he starts to see strange, shrunken men dressed like doctors, creeping around at night wielding huge pairs of scissors. Ralph suffers from the insomnia of the title, and thanks to his lack of sleep, one day he starts to see things. ![]() A large chunk of the book reads like a standalone novel appealing to the new fans King had picked up with his previous couple of novels: people who wanted less in the way of schlock monsters, and more of his insights into humanity.Īnd then, for me, the book got suddenly interesting. At first I didn’t care about Ralph, or Lois, his romantic interest and co-lead but then, suddenly, I did. I wasn’t interested in senior citizens any more than (shame on me) I was interested in the more intricate feminist notes that King was hitting. This makes me sound like an idiot, I’m sure, but I was 14. In Insomnia, they’re older and getting the hell on with it. They longed for their youth, tried to recapture it: it’s a theme in so many of King’s novels. Through King, I had been introduced to adult protagonists, but my concept of their lives extended only to a faintly rock’n’roll version of middle age. I’m not sure I’d read many books with older main characters. And I was excited! Even though Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne had left me a little cold, this – according to the blurb on the back of the book – was a return to King’s more conventional horror writing.īut Ralph Roberts, a septuagenarian widower and Insomnia’s main character, shocked me a little. I cradled the thing for the whole journey: I didn’t have much choice, as it was so big it wouldn’t fit into my backpack. I remember buying this one, as with so many King novels, at the airport right before a holiday. Then, in 1994, he unleashed Insomnia on the world. Instead? In The Dark Half we got a book that bordered on the metafictional, followed by two novels, Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne, that showcased King’s desire to represent female characters better. The world was hankering (then, as now) for more Pennywise. He could have followed the publishing dictum “write what sells”, churned out sequels or revisited themes and ideas. His most famous books had been turned into films, he’d had more bestsellers than anybody could hope to dream of, and he’d taken a short hiatus in which he overcame his addictions. In the 1990s, 29 novels into his career, King could do whatever he wanted. ![]()
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