Insomnia
by Stephen King
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Book Reviews of Insomnia
Book Review: Frustrating
Summary: 3 Stars
This book is simply frustrating. No it is nothing to do with the writing. As usual, King's narrative flows like ice on the glass. Dialogues are very strong and King's unique brand of humor pops up here and there. Characters turn out to be your neighbors you have been seeing around for quite a while...the town's sinister forces are evil -two little bald doctors are evil buuuut
Yes there is but...this story could be simply a gorgeous thing with that kind of eloquent writing and several highly imaginative subplots- but King mischievously holds himself back. This is the frustrating thing. King expertly doles out every and all hints towards a great horror novel but stubbornly leaves it there with a grinning on his face. You feel that King felt where the reader would be dying of wonder and suddenly pulled the reins in the story. The result? If it was a bad book I wouldn't be sorry.
This started in 1991 with funny but overrepetitive Needful Things and culminated its peak in this book, reaching dizzy heights in FBA8-that one (see that review)
Why are you doing this, Mr King? I am not sure if you really hit the wall and start to repeat yourself- Christine and Buick are miles away from each other both are cars (at least in your books models are different, considering Koontz's poor golden retriever reincarnations ) and they could still be two wonderful horror books in two different directions,. Don't tell me you don't read your pal, John Grisham's book. In four out of five books, he tells lawyers and judges and courtrooms. Does anyone object? Why does he not feel stuck inside a court room and go on babbling on the same subject with names of characters being the only thing different?
I am sure you are laughing by yourself or testing the market. If I don't write horror, then where would the horror market go?
Let me tell you: Nowhere. You were the impulse, you were the driving force we love "your horror", not any "horror"
so please don't listen to the critics, high-brows etc listen to your own voice ...please let your next book (seems interesting as usual) be in full throttle without restraining yourself. Dreamcatcher was close, Black House was close Desperation was close but there was always something nagging. I tought you lost it. FB8 proved otherwise. You are deliberatelys holding it.
Anyone who makes me and my stubborn girlfriend read the Gerald's Game, Insomnia and FBA8 read until the last page without skipping anything should be the greatest author- not artistical perhaps not disciplined but a God-born talent.
Please Stephen; I feel there are numerous Shinings, Pet Cemetaries, Christines in your wonderful brain. Please let them go outside.
Thank you in advance.
A constant reader
Book Review: Cure For Insomnia? King Records A Yawner Extraordinaire!
Summary: 2 Stars
For those of you who need to test the waters and try out all the fruits Stephen King has to offer, good luck with Insomnia. It's bitter and over-ripe and maybe a little rotten on the inside.
Insomnia is a sprawling, rambling, 800 page monster that Stephen King put out back in 1994 when the aftertaste of Delores Claiborne and the mediocre short story collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes was wearing off. Written at the height of his game, Insomnia may have been something different, but it wasn't. Weird in many, many places, it starts slow and keeps building to something you don't expect, nor care for. When Clive Barker gets weird, we stand back and gawk and try to make heads or tails of the abomination he has birthed...when King does it we step back and shake our heads and say "Huh?" Built around the story of an old widower who starts seeing weird little men cutting invisible balloons from peoples' heads, Insomnia moves on to cover a psychotic abusive husband...a shelter for abused women ... and a climax that has strange (if head-shakingly puzzling) effects that extend to the Dark Tower series.
I've been reading King since I was a kid and have read (and many times re-read)everything he has ever published. Does that make me an expert, an authority? I think it does. This is King past his prime and falling down. I have never reread this one and maybe that's a crime, maybe Insomnia, like Cujo, gets better with a second go through, but I seriously doubt it. This is not prime King and neither are his next three or four novels. Sad to see the King losing his touch, but it happens to us all. There are many, many more interesting and frightening and enthralling novels from Stephen King, go find one and steer clear of Insomnia unless you positively have to.
Deal with it.
I have just finished re-reading Insomnia and 13 years has definitely done this book justice. The first time I met Ralph Roberts all those years ago, I wasn't very fascinated. Not at all. Now that I have taken the time to re-read the book I have another view on this 800 page behemouth. First off, perhaps I was expecting another IT back then and now I no longer expect that from King. I take what I can get, for better or worse. Having finished The Dark Tower series helped just the tiniest bit in digesting King here. Back in the day, the final page had kinda stumped me and infuriated me a little because it seemed like a rip-off nod to Roland, The Gunslinger from the Dark Tower series, which, back in '94 was far from being finished. Insight. What a great tool. I no longer thing that this book is horrible. It is kinda long, but enthralling nevertheless. Perhaps I should give some of King's other horrid outing a second try? Gerald's Game? Rose Madder? Desperation? Maybe.
Book Review: You better enjoy inter-dimensional travel, because this book gives you get extra helpings of it
Summary: 3 Stars
Okay, let's start off with a positive observation or two about Stephen King's ambitious "Insomnia": I really enjoyed the opening chapters of the book, primarily because it was interesting to see senior citizens used as major protagonists in a blockbuster-style story. I'm not sure that's been done since the "Cocoon" movies. I also liked the mysterious, often scary, way King depicted the intense insomnia, and its creepy hallucinogenic side effects, suffered by central character Ralph Roberts.
But soon we're given a concrete reason for Ralph's insomnia (well, a fantasy-type concrete reason, but a concrete reason nonetheless), so Ralph's strange suffering isn't strange anymore, and- get this- gives way to him becoming an action hero and a traveler between dimensions. His insomnia, you see, was induced by inter-dimensional beings as a first step to give Ralph and his allies the powers to pull off a task to save the multi-verse, a task the inter-dimensional beings can't undertake themselves.
So, as you can see, what starts off as a spooky, fairly intimate story about senior citizens and their various issues turns into this crazy epic about parallel plains of existence, different dimensions, and preventing an event that would be a small tragedy in our world, but whose ripple effect would tear down the fabric of the universe, that sort of thing. And, if I'm honest, I have to say it all sort of works, or at the very least, never completely not works. Also, if you're a fan of King's "Dark Tower" series, you might give this book an extra point or two, because there are strong connections with that series, to the point that "Insomnia" can even be called an extra, bonus book in that saga.
But as events piled up and things became more complicated, I found myself missing the simpler, more grounded situations in the book's early going (including a heartbreaking plot involving Ralph's friend Lois narrowly avoiding being shunted off to a retirement home by her son and daughter-in-law). The inter-dimensional stuff became too dominant, with the action set pieces becoming unnecessarily frequent and long.
Still, I'll say again that the fantasy/adventure plotline certainly isn't horrible, and there's an 11th hour return to a warmer, more realistic tone to the story, so in the end I liked "Insomnia". Didn't love it, but liked it. Ultimately, I just didn't think the story fully justified its length.
But just to give you a final warning: I listened to the unabridged audiobook recording of "Insomnia", read by the great Eli Wallach, via a download from Amazon's Audible subsidiary. That certainly made the going easier. So my criticisms may have been even more pointed if I had to make my way through the book via my eyeballs and attention span alone.
Book Review: The King has no clothes
Summary: 1 Stars
This book is the latest in a continuing series of mediocre efforts from Stephen King. It displays a particularly obnoxious tendency that has crept into his fiction of late: political correctness. Early in the book, King makes a blatant plug for Clinton. Ralph encounters a very minor character who is ranting about how much he hates Clinton. King then tells us that Ralph thinks that Clinton is doing a good job. This has nothing to do with the action. In fact, it stops the action, however briefly. This is only the beginning. A major subplot is the deterioration of Ralph's neighbor, Ed. King is careful to tell us that Ed and his wife Helen supported Clinton. Then Ed, under the influence of the malign Atropos, begins ranting against abortion and eventually attacks Helen. (Apparently King believes that once you stop being pro-choice, it's only one small step to spousal abuse.) This is heavy-handed enough, but King goes further and involves Ed with an Operation Rescue-type group that is willing to kill for its beliefs. This group's members are nothing more than stereotypes: unkempt, ugly, bigoted, violent, and stupid. This elitist stunt in a writer known for his unique appeal to the masses is simply outrageous. Furthermore, Ed's metamorphosis from normal neighbor to right-wing terrorist is not at all believable. We are not given any scenes from Ed's point of view which would allow us to witness the deterioration of his mind. This could have been very powerful (think Harold Lauder in THE STAND, or Lou Creed in PET SEMATARY). Seeing Ed struggle against and eventually surrender to the forces compelling him could have added a needed note of tragedy. But after Ed attacks his wife and is arrested, we barely see him until the climax of the book, a few hundred pages later. This is a major character? Equally obnoxious is the "explanation" of Ed's new pro-life views: his possession by Atropos. Is King implying that one would have to be demon-possessed to adopt pro-life views? This is extremely poor characterization. We deserve better from a professional writer. This review doesn't come from my feelings about Clinton or abortion, which have no place here. But King's feelings about these topics have no place in his fiction, especially if he can't do a better job of characterizing opposing views. Stereotypes should never replace good, solid characters you can care about. I didn't care about Ed or any of the characters, and this made INSOMNIA a major waste of my time. King once criticized a Harlan Ellison story for its preachiness, saying "I prefer my stories without billboards." Well, so do I.Book Review: Love it or hate it...
Summary: 5 Stars
I was surprised to see so many negative reviews for Insomnia on Amazon and so many criticisms saying the plot is directionless, that nothing ties together, and that the story is too unorganized. Insomnia is an extremely long read, clocking in at almost 800 pages and does take time to develop certain things which some readers may not have the patience for, but if the story can keep you reading and interested as it did for me, it only adds to the buildup and mystery of the story which King is weaving together.On the one hand King hands us his signature style of mystery, paranormal, and hypothetically terrifying in the most human of circumstances plots, which concern an old widower named Ralph Roberts who begins losing his sleep gradually after the death of his wife. After finding no remedies for his insomnia, he begins to see "auras" or "colors" around people, ultimately serving as gateways to their lives, life-spans, and souls. After discovering a female friend of his also suffers the same symptoms, Ralph is entwined in King's fantasy writing of fighting off The Powers That Be. Ralph and his female friend Lois then discover that a local wife-beating maniac named Ed Deepnau, who was once a loving husband, is involved in serious hyper-reality and mind-blowing passages into other dimensions and the book then takes off on a journey in which the two old-timers try to put a stop to what is essentially the fate of 2000 innocent people.
The plot is interesting and hooking enough for any fan of Stephen King's fantasy writing as in Eyes Of The Dragon or The Dark Tower series or any of his terror-filled, horror shock-fests such as It or Pet Semetary, satisfying both camps instead of just one, but the story also touches on other, deeper issues such as old age, death, abortion, domestic abuse, and the question of free will or destiny, all without being biased on any of them. Throughout Insomnia King weaves all these into one and the results are outstanding, with a plot, events, and climax which shouldn't leave anyone disappointed, but obviously did so to many reviewers anyway.
The book is a long haul and a great deal to read, but this is not unusual for Stephen King as most fans should know, and you should know within the first 200 pages whether you want to finish it out. But I can honestly reccommend this to both the new reader not quite ready for something as chilling as Pet Semetary as well as the dedicated fan and completist.