Insomnia

Stephen King is known for writing horror books. Insomnia isn’t your normal horror story though. It revolves around the main character, a very old Ralph Roberts who starts to suffer from lack of sleep or insomnia after a tragedy happens in his life. The theme of this book is about perceiving thoughts and what is true against what isn’t.

The book centers on Ralph who experiences hallucinations he calls “auras” and eventually he can’t tell if what he saw was a dream or reality. He finds himself in some trouble after he calls the police to report that Helen Deepneau was beaten by her husband Ed who becomes the main antagonist. Ed had beaten Helen because she had signed a petition supporting the Womancare clinics right to give abortions, turns out he didn’t agree with that so much because he started a “Friends of Life” group against abortions and harasses the clinic and their employees. Ralph becomes an enemy to the organization and is in danger while dealing with practically losing his mind.

I would highly recommend this book to someone who wants to be entirely in someone else’s perspective and who can get into a long story with lots of detail as this review is only of part one out of two and a long epilogue (pages 1-307). This book faces some of the scariest real world problems combined with the aspects of losing one’s mind. Only a small portion of people will enjoy this book but if you do you will end up loving it.

Book Review by Mason B.