Insomnia

After taking a dip into my first Stephen King book, Different Seasons, I started to get comfortable. Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil and The Body were great novellas. I was a bit weirded out by The Breathing Method though. It's one I'm sure is the most overlooked from all of King's works.

The next book I came across was a tome called Insomnia. No, it has nothing to do with the Chris Nolan directed movie of the same name. But I'd like to bring up two points: 1) I originally envisioned the main character of this tale, Ralph Roberts, as the talented comedian Robin Williams. 2) I can't for the life of me figure out why this King book has not become a movie yet.

I discovered this book a midst a box of random props from my days in doing plays at my high school. It was dusty and yellow but that bothered me none. I took it out, started thumbing through it whenever we had rehearsals. I connected with it. Like the main character, I was plagued with insomnia. Sometimes by choice, sometimes an unwilling participant.

But this didn't help any. The book prolonged my personal insomnia even more.

The novel follows Ralph Roberts, a recently widowed middle-aged man. He's retired but is somehow unable to fall asleep at night. His symptoms get worse as he has sensitivity to light and colors, thinking things are invisible or intangible, common stuff when you have this problem. But then it grows more severe and he starts to see bald doctors with giant scissors, going door to door in the middle of the night, snipping the life force away from people.

The novel gradually, slowly, works its suspense and mystery. When the characters are firmly established, that's when the real horror begins. I guess you can say I liked this one from the beginning. I read the last hundred pages on a nice summer morning, keeping tabs on a yard sale for my mom, diligently taping some torn pages as I continued to be enthralled by the magic that was King.