I've heard people call this novel boring, slow, and uninteresting. I find it none of these things.
Ralph Roberts watches his wife slowly die, the introduction begins with a fantastic mental image of this slow ticking of a death watch. It ticks down and down and down until it is silent, and she is gone. His reaction to her passing is understandable, feeling lost he "wanders", he walks and roams and has no direction to his life.
His reaction to his insomnia is also very interesting, and the visions he sees make you question throughout the book if they're just in his head. A symptom of grief and lack of sleep, or if they are really, truly there? I love the three characters named after the Three Fates. I found that particularly clever in a novel that talks its way around death. Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Instead of being portrayed as females, they're portrayed as little bald men that look like doctors. Isn't that symbolism interesting considering Ralph's position? The doctors who couldn't save his wife, the doctors who cannot fix his insomnia. Now there are these doctors named after the fates of death who plague him, particularly Atropos, the one who finally cuts the thread of life.
Well done King, well done. I thought it was the neatest thing when Ralph began to see auras. The way they're described makes it very easy to mentally visualize what you're seeing in your head, and throughout the novel instead of saying "hey that's cool" I feel even worse for the man. If it's real he can look at someone and know if they're going to die, if it's not real it's because he's being torn apart in his own life.
Insomnia is pure metaphor, brilliantly written with lots of little Easter Eggs tossed in as it goes round and round the subject of death.
Ralph Roberts watches his wife slowly die, the introduction begins with a fantastic mental image of this slow ticking of a death watch. It ticks down and down and down until it is silent, and she is gone. His reaction to her passing is understandable, feeling lost he "wanders", he walks and roams and has no direction to his life.
His reaction to his insomnia is also very interesting, and the visions he sees make you question throughout the book if they're just in his head. A symptom of grief and lack of sleep, or if they are really, truly there? I love the three characters named after the Three Fates. I found that particularly clever in a novel that talks its way around death. Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. Instead of being portrayed as females, they're portrayed as little bald men that look like doctors. Isn't that symbolism interesting considering Ralph's position? The doctors who couldn't save his wife, the doctors who cannot fix his insomnia. Now there are these doctors named after the fates of death who plague him, particularly Atropos, the one who finally cuts the thread of life.
Well done King, well done. I thought it was the neatest thing when Ralph began to see auras. The way they're described makes it very easy to mentally visualize what you're seeing in your head, and throughout the novel instead of saying "hey that's cool" I feel even worse for the man. If it's real he can look at someone and know if they're going to die, if it's not real it's because he's being torn apart in his own life.
Insomnia is pure metaphor, brilliantly written with lots of little Easter Eggs tossed in as it goes round and round the subject of death.