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Insomnia

 

Insomnia
Written by Stephen King

About 780 pages
Originally published in 1994
Rate 5/5

This is now officially the longest book I have ever read. Before Insomnia, the longest book I had read was Midnight Sun. Even though this book was incredibility long and it was required reading, I really loved it.

What is Insomnia about?

Ralph Roberts is a 65 year old man. His wife, Carolyn, has recently passed away and he has been suffering with insomnia ever since. His symptoms have been becoming hard to ignore, the hallucinations are just the half of it. All of Ralph's friends offer some advice, but nothing works.

It seems to Ralph that he will just have to endure it until the day he dies. One day as Ralph was walking around town, he witnesses a car crash and his one loving neighbor Ed Deepneau turns into a fiery ball of rage as he accuses the person who crashed into him of murdering babies. Confused by the accusation Ralph intervenes. 

My thoughts on Insomnia

There are quite a bit of plots within this book. At the beginning it seems like everything is randomly happening however the story is still quite easy to follow. Stephen King did a great job at world-building. I normally don't love reading fantasy/sci-fi because of all the weird names assigned to different types of things, but this was super easy to understand. This might be a little to slow paced for some people and I understand that, but I loved it. The fact that the supernatural element took so long to bring up made things more believable.

This was the second time I had read a book with an older main character (the first was The Authenticity Project). The characters within Insomnia talk about aging a lot and it's really sad to read from their perspective because growing old is suppose to be nice, but people are so mean to old people.

I liked this book because of how real it was. It made me feel heartbreak. It made me feel happy. It made me feel something. 

It's really hard to keep a reader interested when the story takes that long to unfold, but because of all the interesting connects this book had with It and The Dark Tower series I was super excited to read on. I have only watched the two recent It films (2017) (2019), but my younger sister really loved the It (2017) so she would talk about the characters a lot, hence, I could spot most of the connections. 

Insomnia, It, and The Dark Tower series are a part of a macro-verse that Stephen King has created.*

Quotes

"Love doesn't come out of a faucet you can turn on and off whenever you want to, but I had to remember my love couldn't fix him." (103)

"There are few mistakes in this world... and once you get to know your way around, maybe there are no mistakes at all."

Links

StephenKing.com
Amazon: Insomnia


*
Here's the math (in case you are wondering):
1958: The losers club members are kids and the get rid of Pennywise.
1985: The losers club members are adults and the kill Pennywise in the ritual of Chud.
1993: Ralph Roberts starts to experience Insomnia.
1993: Patrick draws the dark tower prophecy. 

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