Customer Reviews

Insomnia

5 star:		(167)
4 star:		(96)
3 star:		(62)
2 star:		(56)
1 star:		(68)

 

 

There are many people for whom the book "Insomnia" will serve as a cure for the titular condition. It's an 800 page book that takes about 150 pages to start making sense -- the first quarter of the book is all strange goings-on with no exposition.

Our hero, an old man with a dying wife, begins loosing sleep and (he thinks) hallucinating. He can see auras around people, fields of light that change according to their mood and health and terminate in a long "balloon-string," their soul. And if that's not strange enough, he starts seeing three little bald men dressed as surgeons, who go around snipping people's strings.

It's all very psychedelic and intriguing, but I can see someone giving up on the book before it really gets rolling. Which would be a shame, because the plot kicks in around page 150 and it's a heck of a ride, all the more enjoyable if you don't know what's coming.

Suffice to say that this is the multiverse-hopping, cosmic guru King of The Stand and It, not the bare-bones King of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Running Man (I like 'em both, if you were wondering). Insomnia is actually a better read than both The Stand and It, because it is more closely tied into the world as we know it. Most importantly, the characters are complex and believable, truly people worth knowing.

So if you've got the attention span and the physical strength to lift this book, definitely pick it up. It's a stone trip.

This has to be one of King's most misunderstood and underappreciated works. When I first read this in 1994, I was in my early twenties and didn't really connect with the older characters of this book. Now in my thirties, and not being as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I recently dusted off my hardcover and re-read this.

In my opinion this has to rank among the best King has done. Do not be fooled into thinking there is a lengthy diatribe about the abortion issue. King populates both sides of the argument with good and bad people. If anything, King's message is probably "leave it alone" which I guess can be interpreted that he supports women's choice, but he really doesn't browbeat his opinions through his book (unlike say Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code).

I do think you have to be of a certain age to connect with the characters. Younger readers may not appreciate all the nuances regarding growing old that King conveys in this book.

More importantly, though, my second reading has made me realize how connected this book is with The Dark Tower series King is finishing this year. This might well be considered an ancillary Dark Tower book, as The Talisman, Black House, The Stand and now 'Salem's Lot (for Father Callahan) are.

Give this book a read. It isn't horror per se, as most of King's books aren't in the strictest definition of the horror genre. It is a well written book populated with characters you will care about for the duration of the book (and after!).

Ralph Roberts, now there's a name I'll remember. We've been through a lot, Robert and I (oh, around 787 pages, I'd say), and I don't regret one moment. Sure, the first 200 pages aren't your typical Stephen King book, but I don't see this story NOT having those pages! Mr. King actually took a long time to set up his characters, and with good reason: you end up giving a damn about them, you feel their joy and echo their sorrow. But after around 200 pages, ahh, that's where the adventure really begins, when Ralph Roberts, who has been sleeping less and less, starts to see auras around everything. Just when you think that you have it pretty much figuered out, Mr. King throws you a nice curve ball and surprises you again. Not really a horror book, but an amazing read. Oh, and if you've read King's Dark Tower series, you are in for a special treat! Oh, and don't listen to the one star reviews, they must not of had the patience to get through the first 200 pages. 4 and a half stars!!

When I was younger, I saw a big, inflated ad for IT. The green claw grasping through the sewer grating grabbed my curiosity and squeezed. I asked for, and received, it for Christmas (I was twelve, how's that for a children's story?). I loved the thing.

The next Christmas, I got everything Stephen King had ever published. Half of it was great. Half of it could have lured flies from a three-day-old corpse. Every time he wrote something, I got it for Christmas. After the astonishingly bad Tommyknockers I stopped reading them. Eventually, my family noticed, and stopped buying them for me. A few years later, he published Desperation and The Regulators at the same time. They both sounded interesting, but I couldn't bring myself to buy them. I mean, after all, TOMMYKNOCKERS!! A few weeks ago, I saw hardback copies of Desperation and The Regulators in the overstock bin at Waldenbooks for under $5.00 each. Well, I bought 'em, read 'em, and loved 'em. So I went ahead and read Insomnia.

This book is not for everyone. There is character development out the wazoo, and some people cannot handle quite that much. After all, some people thought Michael Mann's film Heat was too long. About 200 - 250 pages goes by before the main plot kicks in. I know what you're thinking, "Michael Moorcock could tell the history of the multiverse in 250 pages." Well, Michael Moorcock never had characters that felt this real.

Face it, Stephen King is not successful because of his fast-paced, plot-driven narratives. Stephen King is successful, because of the details, and characters so thought out, you forget they're not real.

I liked it a lot.

This book takes me back. I read it after school for about a week straight following its release, and I remember thinking how it was one of the first times Stephen King really showed us the interconnectedness of his works, something he'd been hinting at for years. "I'm actually only writing one long story in dozens of volumes," King had said on occasion, and Insomnia proved him right. With cross-over's, tie-in's, and references to so many previous King tales, from Pet Sematary and the Gunslinger on, Insomnia was like some massive transit station held between two manic looking red book covers.

As for the tale it tells in its own right, Insomnia, King's mid-90's mega-novel, breaks the traditional storytelling mold by being set among a cast composed mostly of people in their seventies and beyond. As he is stricken with insomnia and begins to see some very strange things in the dead of night, Derry, Maine resident and man of advanced years, Ralph Roberts, is unwittingly a witness to creatures from an alternate dimension caught up in the midst of a terrible war. On one side are beings of good who serve order, and on the other are those who seek to bring about the chaotic reign of the dreaded Crimson King, a figure of inhuman evil and insanity who comes to be of great importance in King's Dark Tower (and other) books. Alongside Ralph is another senior citizen and fellow insomniac, Lois Chasse, who has also seen the creatures who inhabit the night. Together these unlikely heroes quest to halt the plans of evil, which have been fed by and become focused on the growing dissention in Derry which surrounds the visit of a powerful and divisive figure in the "Pro-Choice" movement who is scheduled to speak at a crowded civic center. In due time Lois and Ralph learn the murderous intentions of the Crimson King, who has possessed the mind of a citizen of Derry. This man is being unwittingly employed by evil to carry out an act of mass murder, all with a goal of eliminating a single individual who stands in the way of the Crimson King and his minions.

Insomnia has a likable tone and a denser than expected storyline that skips along at a rapid pace and is populated by familiar landmarks, references to other books, and characters so welcoming that it takes a devoted Stephen King reader a long time to notice there really isn't a lot going on in this novel. Mostly if King's career is studied as a whole Insomnia fits in more as a gathering point to re-direct the entire canon toward the conclusion of the "one long story" foreshadowed in the Dark Tower. Although it contains a beginning, middle, and end, and could be read alone without turning the page of any other Stephen King book, Insomnia really functions best when it is understood to be what it is at its core: a signpost passed by on a much longer literary journey.

Three and a half stars.

Of all the many modern authors that write today, few are more frequently typified than Stephen King. To his critics, he is a windbag with a tendency to bloat who's far too much in love with the sound of his own voice to keep his length under control. To his fans, he is a masterful storyteller with a talent for creating lively, organic characters. Both of those poles of King appear in this book, and both to almost as great an extreme as I can remember from any of his previous writing.

Let's start with the good. The characters in this book are wonderful. While I certainly don't believe that he captures the essence of old age at all (these folks are almost as active as the ridiculous old people they have on television commercials these days), since I don't see the age of the protagonist and his cohorts as being critical to the plot, I'm inclined to disregard that gaping oversight in light of the masterful treatment that he gives all of the characters who people this book. King's typical narrative voice is also present here, lending the novel a familiar tone that most readers should be able to fall in with quickly and comfortably.

The bad. This book is big. Very big. About two hundred pages too big, truth be told. The thing about the criticism of King's inability to control his bloat is that it's right, and in no other work outside of It is it more apparent than in this one. Not nearly enough happens in this book to mandate the amount of time you're going to spend reading it. By allowing the length to spiral out of control, he only makes it that much less accessible to the action-oriented horror base of his audience. King also drops a lot of brand names here--another frequent criticism. I personally don't care. You might.

In one notable deviation from King's excellent treatment of his characters, his shallow, somewhat misogynistic understanding of the female psyche rears its ugly head. I'm not a hundred percent on this, but I'm pretty sure that there's no connection between battered women and lesbianism, as King implies.

Most importantly, there's a deep element of this book that is utterly and completely unaccessible to anybody who is not at least passingly familiar with King's magnum opus--the Dark Tower. Indeed, I would wager that if you haven't read at least the first three books in the series, you're going to be completely lummoxed when it comes to understanding why some of the characters do what they do, or what's going on at all. Insomnia was penned during a period of Steve's career when he was unable to write a Dark Tower book, even though he wanted to, and that frustrated desire led him, in this case, to write a book that is so intensely mired in that world's mythology that it's nigh on incomprehensible to those not in the know. I am, so I didn't have a problem. In fact, I'd say that any Dark Tower fan probably needs to read the book precisely for that reason. Other, less familiar readers WILL have problems, however.

On the whole, while I personally have some affection for this book, I can't give it my unconditional recommendation. Steven King has written many great pieces that anybody can read (Desperation, Hearts in Atlantis), but this is not one of them. While King fans will find a lot to like, anybody who's not already fimrly entrenched as a King enthusiast should probably stick to one of his more accessible books.

A method actor who received much of his training at the famed Actor's Studio, Eli Wallach has been delivering stellar performances on both stage and screen for the past 50 years. He gives us one more outstanding performance as he narrates Stephen King's lauded Insomnia.

While Wallach's name might not be familiar to some, his face certainly is as he has appeared in numerous major films, such as The Magnificent Seven, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and The Misfits. He has received four Emmy nominations, and received a Tony for his role in The Rose Tattoo. Wallach also penned his autobiography The Good, The Bad, and Me: In My Anecdotage, which I surely recommend. His narration of Insomnia leaves listeners both chilled and thrilled by his rendering of this iconic tale.

Many of us probably have a sleepless night or two, but few are as troubled by insomnia as Ralph Roberts., a widower who lives in Derry, Maine. Ralph's problem is not a mere case of tossing, turning, then finally dropping off. No, Ralph's insomnia involves seeing things, hazes or auras if you will as well as colors around his friends. He becomes aware not only of another plane of existence but that his hometown is in grave danger from an evil force. To compound matters Ralph's lady friend, Lois Chasse, suffers from the same malady, and it seems they've been chosen to put things right - if possible.

Listen, let the goose bumps rise, and enjoy every line.

- Gail Cooke

I just wanted to say that you really need to read the Dark Tower books before you get to this one. If you don't read these books (The Gunslinger, The Drawing of the Three, The Waste Lands, Wizard in Glass) or at least one or two, you just won't have a clue what's going on and you'll think it's boring and you'll give up. If you see this book as what it is, namely a big bunch of exposition into the inner workings of the Dark Tower series, it will be compelling and the end will make you cry (at least, I did). Just a hint from a huge fan.

First off, either you will love it and possibly read it again or hate it and lose interest. Personally I loved it within a few pages. I give it a 4 by itself and if you mix it in with the tied in story line of other King books than it's a five. But either way, you have an epic story [Don't worry I won't repeat what everybody else already typed in]- loveable characters and mysterious characters, and an ending that gives some closure but still leaves you almost missing the characters when you finish the book. [I missed them a little bit myself anyway.] The story has a political element that runs through the entire book. Politically it's about abortion. Then there is a spiritual element about life after death and so on. SK talks about little men on a different level with names borrowed from greek mythology like Atropos, And how they deal with life and death. I don't want to give away too much. The two main characters are Ralph and his neighbor with whom he is quite fond of. It's kind of a cute chemistry he brings about with these two senior citizen friends. Then there is a typical Mr. nice guy named Ed, who starts going insane and becomes a wifebeater seemingly out of the blue, and the way King works this story line in is just a huge hook. It really causes the interest in the story and the charisma of Ralph to work. The book is fascinating and I'm not the biggest reader, so believe me when I say that it probably won't seem nearly as long as it really is. SK has different kinds of books- occasionally there's a so-so book like cycle of the werewolf which is a good story but not really filling for a King book. Then there's books where he has a great story and writes it in a good way, and sometimes he has a good story that he writes in a great way. I think this is one of the occasions where he has a great story and writes it in a great way. It makes you think and yet it's very entertaining at the same time. I think anybody that can get slightly interested in it, will eventually like it alot. Hope that helped.

When I first started reading this book I was kind of lost, therefore, I was a little frustrated but I kept at it. It ended up being one of the best King books I have read! The book starts off with main character Ralph Roberts losing his wife to cancer. He begins to experience insomnia, thinking it must be because of the grief he is experiencing from his wife's death. But then he begins to see these auras around people: some bright and beautiful others black and deadly looking. On one of his late night awakenings he notices two little bald doctors coming out from his neighbor's house across the street. This sparks some fear but mainly curiosity which gets him involved deeper than he had planned. It begins the great journey of jumping in between the real and supernatural world, telepathy and the great lengths that people will go to to save someone else. What I really liked about the book was that I caught two references to different books that King wrote. He mentions Gage Creed from 'Pet Semetary' and towards the end he mentions that things in the sewer in Derry have an unfortunate way of showing back up (referencing 'It'). It is always amazing to me how King manages to throw those little things in! At times the book gets a tad uninteresting but all in all it was a great book. The ending really made up for any monotonous sections. I almost cried at the end even! Ralph Roberts is a true hero! If you like King you will definitely like Insomnia.