Duma Key: A Novel
by Stephen King
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Book Reviews of Duma Key: A Novel
Book Review: Supernatural elements are unsatisfying...but some great writing
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm a pretty huge Stephen King fan, dating back to about 1979, when I first read THE SHINING. I've stuck with him through some poor times (THE DARK HALF & NEEDFUL THINGS) and certainly enjoyed the high points. DUMA KEY falls somewhere in the middle of the batch. It has some wonderful writing...aside from the story...King's ability to describe a situation (like an artist's first time gallery -opening) or a feeling (the frustration of learning to live with only one arm) is near its height. The settings and tone of the book are well-crafted and you'll have no trouble immersing yourself in the place, time, weather, etc.
Yet it also fails on a surprising level. It simply isn't all that good of a story of the supernatural.
The book starts off well enough...in fact, it's gripping for quite awhile. We meet Edgar Freemantle, a wealthy and highly successful commercial builder in the Detroit area. He's married, has two nearly grown daughters and generally is the American personified. One day, he is horribly injured in an accident with a large crane. Edgar is nearly killed, but survives...minus one arm and with some significant brain damage which leaves him struggling to remember words and seething with anger when he can't express himself. His wife can't take it after awhile, and leaves him. She also leaves him feeling suicidal...but Edgar's physician convinces him to find a nice area to relocate to and to take up something he's always been interested in...but never pursued...painting.
Edgar takes his broken body and spirit to Duma Key, Florida. This little island has a few homes on it, but is remarkably free from development. Near Tampa, it sits right on the gulf, and Edgar is moved by its beauty, and in relative solitude, he begins to work on healing his body. His mind also begins to stitch itself back together and finally does begin to draw and paint. And wouldn't you know it, Edgar is an amazing talent. You'd almost think his work was being guided by another hand...it's so remarkable and strange.
Much of DUMA KEY barely touches on the supernatural. Yet it is always just there. Edgar's stunning artistic skills CAN'T be all innate, can they? The whispering of the waves over the shells under Edgar's house can't just be random sounds, can they? And the strange behavior of his very elderly neighbor Elizabeth Eastlake can't JUST be dementia, can it?
Edgar develops a close friendship with Ms. Eastlake's caretaker, a retired lawyer named Wireman, who is also on Duma Key to overcome personal and physical trauma. The two men form a quick bond. Which is good, because things are about to get very strange on Duma Key, and they'll need each other.
I was disappointed when the supernatural elements of the book began to come to the forefront, expecting something more than what to me was a rather lame ghost story. The primary "villain" of the supernatural crew in this book is only sketchily explained, and her powers, while significant...seem to be only partially thought-out by King. He actually doesn't seem to have a full handle on what sort of creature he's concocted. I kept waiting for something to click home, for a puzzle piece to fall into place...but I was left unsatisfied. And much of the spooky stuff is explained through a somewhat awkward device of flashing back through first the memories of Elizabeth as a girl and then through Edgar's artwork. I felt like we were still being given exposition as the book was 30 pages from its conclusion. I don't have problems with flashbacks as a concept at all...but I felt like almost no NEW information was being discovered in the present. All our "heroes" have to do is figure out what happened in the past, and then do a couple of things to fix them.
Also (and I've complained about this before), King has concocted yet another hero who is an artist. I am so tired of this. Here we have painter. LISEY'S STORY gave us a writer. CELL had a graphic novelist. THE SHINING had a writer. THE DARK HALF had a writer. Even THE DARK TOWER series, it could be argued, all stemmed from a writer. I understand that King understands the lot of an artist better than most...but he also has an imagination, and could surely craft more heroes from non-artistic cloth. Heck, Stu Redman from THE STAND worked at a gas station!
Finally, the character of Edgar's friend Wireman is simply not convincing. He peppers his speech with frequent Spanish words...primarily "muchacho." I don't know too many Spanish-speakers who toss that word around in every other sentence. He's a nearly perfectly sensitive friend...never taking a misstep, always ready with sound advice and a glass of iced green tea. It's a nice concept...but I never was able to quite wrap my mind around him as an actual person.
Fortunately, the other character's King creates are vintage. Edgar's daughters are concisely and specifically drawn. His troubled ex-wife is well done. Elizabeth Eastlake's delicate hold on sanity are well-rendered.
In the end, I recommend the book. It is very long, but it is full of great King touches. He is a very good writer, after all. This makes his stumbles seem more like full-blown falls...but it's okay, because he hops back up, brushes off the dust, and moves forward again. My biggest complaint is that in this book, what he moves towards is not that great. A lot of the tone of the book reminded me of King's BAG OF BONES. If you liked that book (I wasn't nuts about it)...you should really like DUMA KEY.
Book Review: No Retirement for Stephen King and that is Good News
Summary: 5 Stars
Stephen King has found a new line of inspiration which is in many ways the old lines but revisited, mixed, merged, transmuted. The lake and the burying of the evil one at the bottom of it has already been used in a short story about a malefic monkey. The use of silver to kill the monsters was used in the "Silver Bullet" or "The Cycle of the Werewolf" in which a crippled boy in a wheelchair with the help of an alcoholic uncle kills the werewolf that is residing inside the local preacher. But here we have silver harpoons or silver candle sticks to kill living dead creatures. We could find many other elements that are just transposed and translated into a new context. The island, the evil forces coming from afar, the ocean and a storm, all that is at the heart of "The Storm of the Century". The stealing of children by evil forces is also common. But this story is new in some elements that transcend the similarities with the past. The evil force is a woman, some Greek goddess, Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, carried away to the underworld by Pluto and spending six months with her "man" and six months with her "mother'. But Stephen King does not use these connections and the fact that Demeter is the famous triple goddess of the Celts, or Isis of the Egyptians, and many other Germanic Beths. That evil force governs dead people from an eponymous ship that is a direct hint at some Flying Dutchman or some Ancient Mariner. But the sex of that evil person is a real change. In Stephen King's books the evil one is systematically a man, the Dark Man, the man dressed in black, the Crimson King, etc. We can note the color red of this Persephone that refers to the Dark Tower's Crimson King but also to many other common elements. The red of the famous REDRUM of "The Shining", but also blood (think of the menstrual blood of "Carrie"), fire, violence and many others. The other major change is Florida. Stephen King has been everywhere in the States except the Deep South under Virginia and of course Florida, though the black man who possesses the shining in the eponymous book spends his winter in Florida. But that is light. Change in place, climate, geography, and even people, plus of course natural dangers with tropical storms, hurricanes and alligators, all of these not very common in Maine, or even in California, Nevada, Colorado or other kingian states. But beyond this continuity and change spliced together the novel has a rhythm that is new for Stephen King. By rhythm I mean slightly more than the speed of the story or the storytelling but also some themes that determine that rhythm. The main characters are beyond middle age for two of them out of three (the third one resembles of lot to the young Stephen King raised by his mother in the absence of a father, though with a brother in King's personal case, and yet King has used that situation of a son or a daughter with a one parent - mother - family a lot), which is by far a change from "The Stand", "The Dark Tower", "Carrie" and many other "Firestarter's", though we already have such characters in "The Tommyknockers", a woman writer and a poet. That leads to the second element. The artistic endeavor in this book is painting. That is nearly a first in Stephen King's books, definitely a first as a central theme and even weapon in the book. But Stephen King seems to become more interested in this book in some magic or supernatural phenomena that are connected to old Amerindian elements. There is in a way a rhythm that reminds us of Anne Rice and her latest novels when she brings a black Mayfair witch into the world of vampires on a background of Mesoamerican and Vodun legends and religious rituals. This rhythm turns the novel into a trip that tries to recapture some past elements that inform the present. Here what happened in 1927 is essential in 2007 to understand what is happening eighty years later. That treatment is not common in Stephen King, even if his use of North American Amerindian lore and legends is quite common like in "Pet Semetery", "The Dark Half" or "The Dreamcatcher". This luxuriant nature, extreme climate and very contemplative attitude or hypnotizing power create an interesting cocktail that makes us run through the novel, though we do take our time to turn the pages and keep them down against hostile winds. There is also another theme that is used with a lot more force here: the basic group of muck cleaners is a trio of three men. This is apparently a first too. In "The Dark Tower we have a group of four people, three men and a woman, though note the woman is black and in a wheelchair. "The Stand" is also more complex even if the sacrificed ones started three on the road, with a fourth one who had been sent before as a scout. But this fourth one was the retarded character and only two of the three will reach Las Vegas because one will break his leg and survive thanks to a dog and the passing fourth one on his way home. Their mission is to re-enact the Christian crucifixion, which has no import in the present novel, and moreover women are essential in "The Stand", the old black lady who plays the role of the seer and the prophet in a very religious line, whereas the old lady in "Duma Key" is white and she does not speak of the future but of the past.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Book Review: Art Imitating Life?
Summary: 3 Stars
The prolific purveyor of terror, Stephen King, semi-successfully turns his finely honed, `I-know-what-scares-you' gaze from the venue of his beloved Maine to the seemingly serene retiree-haven of the Florida Keys in his umpteenth novel entitled, "Duma Key". This tale of horror explores the idea of an imaginative power so forceful that when it flexes its muscle a combination of all-hell-breaking-loose steam and creative juices gone wild collide with the impact of the construction crane that nearly ends the life of chief protagonist and narrator, Edgar Freemantle, rendering him without an arm and a severely damaged leg. In his usual easy-to-read style that makes use of the most current common day benchmarks of our 21st century culture--from the mention of items for sale from popular mail order catalogs to quotations from popular songs--King freely allows Freemantle to muse insightful with regard to his accident, the effect it had on his former life and his struggle towards a recuperation that will in his mind allow him to again live productively.
I use the prefix `semi' because although successful in his execution of creating a thoroughly believable character experiencing some pretty unorthodox events, King always writes a good book slipping in some thought-provoking big questions that still appeals to the `American Idol' watching masses. However, in terms of fashioning a novel that actually horrifies, `Duma Key' fails on some nuanced level.
Don't get me wrong--`Duma Key' provides an above average amount of entertainment. Freemantle's voice compels the reader to turn the pages; King's concept of speculative almost LSD-induced art fantasy that actually Pygmalion-izes into a complicated reality with a vengeance boggles a mind even well-versed in the painted daydreams the likes of Salvador Dali, Le Douanier Rousseau, and Yves Tanguy. From the standpoint of someone who collects art strictly for pleasure, the visual delights conceived by King titillate and amuse--this combined with Freemantle's odd clairvoyance lends an interesting blend of voyeurism that has the reader sitting on the edge of his/her seat, cheering Edgar on--willing him to become the celebrated media-darling Picasso of `Pink', the name of his rented Duma beach house.
However, when the actual `horror' of the story molecularizes into an adversary wreaking collateral damage on Freemantle's friends and family and Edgar, with the help of two well-meaning and understanding buddies formulate a triumvirate of evil-trouncing ubermen, the third-portion of the narrative casts aside the philosophical ruminations and moves into overdrive--much action with the usual King touches of slimy visceral images that worked well in "IT" but fall short here. I've mentioned my `immune' theory in some of my other reviews with regard to the way an audience well versed in the art of movie and television viewing where the inner-workings of the mind of a serial killer blending together with that of the supposed normal productive citizen is considered de rigueur, blurring and sanitizing what is actually perceived now as truly horrific.
In short, King's evil embodiment simply doesn't seem that evil when the audience has already been desensitized to such archetypical views of the dark side. The idea of ancient badness seems almost whimsical, like some entity that escaped from the climatic end reel of `Indiana Jones and the Ark of the Covenant'--the black mammy protectress as stereotypical as the voodoo woman--all headdress and earrings--in a New Orleans genre film like "The Skeleton Key." We may recognize these characters as beloved familiars--a part of any good storytelling--but after the likes of cheek-eating Hannibal Lector, the assortment of blood-sucking vampires in the mini-series of `Salem's Lot' and now the intellectual and thoughtful serial killer/avenger Dexter in the popular Showtime serial--King's Team Wicked lacks that extra dash of sauce piquant that had the crowds in the Roman Coliseum roaring for bigger and badder atrocities.
Bottom line? Stephen King's latest bad boy, 600+ page "Duma Key" adequately supports the already established King horror mechanism. In a pensive narrative that may reflect King's own experience regarding his nearly fatal accident, themes of life and death ebb and flow in the mind of main character Edgar Freemantle as he battles the inevitability of change after a life-altering experience. However, King's need to bang in the action, bites him as his ultimate explanation for all the strange Duma Key goings-on just don't satisfy an audience already immunized and sated with enough cinematic horror to fill 20 volumes of Edgar Allen Poe tales and then some. Recommended solely to experience King and his reflections on life and immortality after his accident through the voice of his protagonist and his delightful artistic conceptions, all of which would surely make up an interesting and most attractive art collection for exhibition.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
Book Review: Fresh and heartfelt
Summary: 5 Stars
Edgar Freemantle is a millionaire, having made his fortune in construction. He has a happy marriage and two lovely grown daughters. But his contentment changes in one moment when a 12-story crane crushes his truck, along with himself, at a job site. The accident shatters his hip, breaks his ribs, damages his vision and costs him his right arm. Edgar's head injury impairs his brain to the point where he doesn't know his own family members, scrambles his speech and is unable to remember what happened. His frustration fuels his rage, and he turns abusive toward those trying to help him, including his wife Pam. His psychiatrist, Dr. Kamen, gives the angry, depressed, drug-addicted patient an unusual treatment: a Lucille Ball look-alike doll for him to vent his fury upon, but the cure is insufficient.
When Pam informs Edgar that she's leaving him, he retorts, "Get out, you quitting birch." Yet that last pain in a chain of horrors comes close to totally destroying him. He contemplates suicide. But how can he do it without his life insurance company contesting the settlement? Even more importantly, how can he kill himself in a way that won't hurt his daughters, especially his sensitive favorite, Ilse? Dr. Kamen intervenes, suggesting that he move away for at least a year. Although he (and Kamen himself) is skeptical that leaving the area will help his despair, Edgar feels something that almost resembles hope. And when Kamen asks him if anything besides his work and family has ever made him happy, Edgar remembers that he loved to draw when he was a child.
Edgar proceeds to rent a huge pink house on Florida's Duma Key. Before he moves, though, he has an experience in which his (amputated) right arm seems to put a suffering dog out of its misery by choking it to death. Or did it? He also dreams a terrifying nightmare, in which Reba, his anger management doll, grown to the size of a real child and with her mouth smeared with blood, tells him, "The bad frog chased us!" (At this point, the reader experiences a sudden urge to flip on another light or three in a night-darkened house.)
Settled into "Big Pink," Edgar sketches and then paints, sometimes in a frenzy and with the sure knowledge that his missing right arm is, at the very least, guiding him. Those dream-fever art attacks result in incredible paintings, some of which are beautiful while others are ominous. Edgar repeatedly paints a ship he has not physically seen in the ocean outside his window. When Ilse plans to visit him with good news, his right arm tingles and itches until he draws the person he somehow knows is connected with Ilse's coming announcement: a young man in jeans and a Minnesota Twins shirt.
As he sketches, Edgar knows not only that the subject of his portrait has given his daughter a ring, but also where it was bought. When she arrives, he discovers that his drawing is eerily psychic, down to the tiniest details. The story's atmosphere turns darker with foreshadowing as Edgar and Ilse attempt to explore the jungly deserted end of the island. However, they are unable to enter it, partly due to the vegetation but mostly because Ilse becomes deathly ill.
Meanwhile, Edgar meets his neighbors. The elderly Elizabeth Eastlake owns the houses on the island, including Big Pink. Her caretaker, Wireman, is both damaged and wise. Their fates are inextricably linked with Edgar's. A mystery threads through the plot: what exactly happened to Elizabeth's twin sisters decades ago? Some lives are rebuilt while others are damaged beyond repair when frail human beings battle a mysterious presence.
DUMA KEY pulls readers in on the first page, not releasing them until the very end of this hefty spellbinder. Of course, that's nothing new for Stephen King, that fine teller of tales. Yet this story feels fresh and heartfelt. (King survived a horrendous accident himself; parts of the novel feel like a "What if?" alternative reality to his recovery.) There is a poignant sweetness to Edgar's resurrection, especially in his connections with family and friends, with accompanying joy, unbearable sorrow and a distinct upwelling of hope.
We also encounter a goodly amount of King's trademark creepy heeby jeebies. But by the time things get really crazy, we've related to Edgar so long that we fight the monsters shoulder to shoulder with him. DUMA KEY is King at his yarn-spinning best; it's no wonder that his "Constant Reader" population continues to grow as the years roll by.
[...]
Book Review: The man can WRITE
Summary: 4 Stars
Stephen King has always been able to tell a good story, to crook his finger, lure the sucker in and then scare the pants off him/her. (Like this reader who can still remember finishing "`Salem's Lot" at midnight, alone in my dorm room...and the sleepless night that followed.)
And he's always been able to create memorable and enduring characters, ones we can't put out of our minds no matter how hard we may try. Examples range from the clown from "It" (SHEESH!) to
And to say Stephen King is prolific is the understatement of the century. The number of words this man has written? I can't even imagine. I'm sure he's probably experienced writer's block, everyone has, but I can't imagine where he found the time.
But in the last couple of decades? I've realized that he can also WRITE. "Bag of Bones" was my first clue. A ghost story, true, but on a different level than before. The words weren't there merely to seduce the reader into letting his/her guard down until the monster jumped out of the closet, they were there to evoke feeling and thought, and to develop real flesh and blood characters.
I was a late-comer to "The Dark Tower" books (which really meant I didn't have to endure the long wait for Book 4 that had my friends gnashing their teeth in frustration). I listened to the first 6 books on tape...and then rushed out to get Book 7 as soon as it was available. This saga, richly detailed, full of characters that we truly get to see inside and out, impressed me to no end. And the way the books intersect the real world in a way SK couldn't have imagined when he started 30 years ago - I loved it.
Oh - and "The Green Mile"... Every time I look at my 6 little "Green Mile" books - I could myself as incredibly lucky that I was around at the time he was releasing them one per month. True, at the end of each month, I was howling for more, but I wouldn't have traded that experience for anything.
Now - about his current book. I put a marker in "Duma Key" at page 67. That's when I was hooked - I was in this book for the long haul - no looking back. (Though a bout with a week long flu kept me from finishing it as fast as I wanted.) Edgar Freemantle undergoes a life shattering accident...one that forever changes him and the lives of those around him.
To build a new life, he heads south, to Duma Key, Florida, and then the blessings and curses begin. Blessings of healing and new friendship, and curses...well, this is a Stephen King book.
Edgar is bewitched by the island, by the sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico, by the pink house he rents, and by the talents he never knew he had. He reaches deep into himself for the strength to heal and to come back from the very dark place he inhabited after his accident.
"I remembered him that day at Lake Phalen - the tatty briefcase, the cold autumn sunshine coming and going in diagonal stripes across the living room floor. I remember thinking about suicide, and the myriad roads leading into the dark: turnpikes and secondary highways and shaggy little forgotten lanes."
This is a book about grief, love, frustration, anger and joy. Of all the emotions Edgar experiences in his long journey, the one that I could relate too most strongly, was that of a father's love for his child. He freely admits to himself that he loves one of his daughters more than the other, but as much as that might bother me, it is honest, and his love for Ilse is a wonderful thing to watch. His worry about her is also very powerful.
"I felt uneasy about Ilse - the way parents are always uneasy about the problems of their children, I suppose, once they're too old to be called home when it starts to get dark and the baths are being drawn..."
In short, a book about people and about the complexity of human life. True, it's also a book about the undead and talking dolls...but that's the fun of it.
And when it comes to further Stephen King books? I told you he had me at Page 67. I'm in, I'm all in...