Stephen King has made a career out of scaring audiences with tales so disturbing that they can keep you up at night. But what about the author himself? "Insomnia" is a story that was written during the author's own insomnia and feels just as neurotic as someone suffering through long and confusing nights. The story in a lot of ways captures odd obsessions with Greek mythology as well as King's own The Dark Tower series, of which this book overlaps with significantly in the final stretch. It's a book for loyal readers who spend countless hours toiling over consistency and details. However, it's a tough read for those not ready for long and winding stories with confusing tangents and a world that reflects the author taking big risks in his prose and producing one of his oddest books yet.
The story follows Ralph Roberts, a man whose wife has recently died and is now suffering from an insomnia that grows throughout the book. His humble life in Derry, Maine involves long walks and attempts to break his loneliness. He becomes frustrated as the world around him functions normally and he's left with sinking fears. This is an easy place for other authors to leave the character, but King is more desiring a route that involves the supernatural in a fantasy story that is meant to encapsulate a variety of themes, most notably the struggle of death. Ralph's story is pitted against an ongoing plot involving anti-abortionists, but becomes about more as the story progresses. The book is so long that by the time it gets to the point of the first section of the book (the three bald doctors, symbolic of Greek mythology's death), it's a gradual reveal that feels overdue. When it comes, the story changes course and becomes one of the author's most surreal titles yet, including a strange tie-in to The Dark Tower, itself an all-encompassing tale that connects all of his literature.
If it wasn't for the book's introduction of prime antagonist The Crimson King, "Insomnia" would be an easy book to excise from King's bibliography. It's a book that starts off as an interesting look into a lonely man's life, but quickly turns him into a savior of the universe. With the help of fellow insomniac Lois, he must fight supernatural forces to set everything right. The issue is that King wishes to intersect every plot in the book into a big poignant statement, instead making it a complicated mess. The supernatural intersects with the normal world in a way that is insane, and only ever works if long and elaborate prose appeals to the reader. Even then, King's obsession with morbid details has a limited appeal that drags the story down at times. His one saving grace is that his prose is more ambitious than it has ever been, managing to make use of italics and mid-sentence breaks into a vibrant exploration of mental distress. However, it also means that the book has a bit of a rocky flow to it that cannot withstand its novelty.
"Insomnia" is a decent book, but is overlong in ways that an author in need of an editor usually achieves. At over 600 pages, there is a good story here and it does add interesting additions to The Dark Tower mythology. With that said, the slow and methodical points add little to the pacing of the book, and make it an overbearing exercise in King's obsession with detail. There's too much going on that the parts that do work (Ralph and Lois' relationship, the three bald doctors) get overshadowed by the clunky, try hard nature of the parts that don't. King is capable of creating incredible universes on the page that will provoke the reader. This book is only that half of the time, and the rest it is over deserving of a nap to help give it a better perspective.
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