So when I first read Insomnia, all its references to King’s other works meant nothing to me. If you remember my reread of The Gunslinger, I didn’t read the Dark Tower series until I was 23. It’s a Dark Tower novel, almost more so than even The Gunslinger. That’s when the truth of this book is revealed. This is also where King introduces the Crimson King, who would later drive much of the action in the final Dark Tower novels. There’s a lengthy and important subplot concerning abortions and the pro-choice camp, and the book wanders into total ka-is-a-wheel, heavy-referencing-for-the-fanbase territory. In Insomnia it was laid bare, and when I first read it, King sort of lost me. The theme of free will versus some form of higher predestination runs through a huge amount of King’s fiction, coming to a head in the Dark Tower series. They’re actually serving to bridge the divide between the concepts of “purpose” and “random” – two key notions in King’s Dark Tower series, and a less high-profile constant throughout much of his later work. Only, wait! The strange bald doctors aren’t stock horror villains. For 14-year-old me, this was the moment when the book suddenly became a horror story, which is what I thought I wanted from King. The “little bald doctors” – who are linked to the ancient Greek conception of the Fates – are killing people cutting their strings. 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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