Book Review: Insomnia by Stephen King
Rating: 3.5 stars
Review: Ralph is an older man, a bachelor now after his wife's passing, who spends his days with retired friends and spends his nights pondering his increasingly common sleepless hours. It seems that, every day, he loses a few more minutes at a time, until eventually he's only managing an hour or two a night before sitting wide awake, once again, watching from his window while the rest of the world slumbers.
Something else has arrived with his sleepless nights. Strange colors begin to radiate from people, from things, and the more Ralph watches, the more he realizes that there are differences in them. They change with situations, moods, and external circumstances, and some make him uneasy. Some terrify him. What scares him more, though, is what else he sees besides the colors.
Wildly weird and creepy and imaginative as Stephen King does so well, it made me wonder how many sleepless nights he must have with these ideas lurking in the dark corners of his mind. Does emptying them on paper help or hinder his rest? Although I enjoyed the story (as I always do with King), I didn't connect as firmly with the characters as I have in other books which is why the rating isn't quite as high. It was good company during the toasty summer nights when my own sleeping efforts were restless and I am hoping that finishing this one may help break the reading slump I've been in for the past few weeks.