Duma Key: A Novel
by Stephen King
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Book Reviews of Duma Key: A Novel
Book Review: Magical Duma Key -- "Lost" and found?
Summary: 5 Stars
Duma Key is probably King's most personal novel in quite some time, and as such it is unexpectedly gripping in a "don't even THINK about putting it down" kind of way. While I thought The Cell was basically silly (something King probably pounded out in a few weekends over a case of Coors), Duma Key is carefully plotted, with beautiful writing and complex and magnificently nuanced characters. The narrator, Edgar Freemantle, spends a few months on a haunted island recovering from a devastating accident that left him alone and enraged. Fighting both his depression and his anger, Edgar connects with two other damaged people who help him unravel the mysteries of both the island and his own soul. While the novel is strikingly original, King does weave through it strands of his own past stories that will resonate with his fans - you'll find hints of Misery (what IS the artistic process, after all?), Dolores Claiborne (those chinas!), The Shining (twin girls, memories, ghosts), and a nice nod to "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption"("`Zihuatanejo,' he said, rolling the word softly from his tongue like music.'").
Those familiar with the ABC television series "Lost" will find it intriguing that King, a self-avowed fan of the series, has written a novel about a mysterious island on which strange things happen and odd creatures appear, and to which a motley assortment of damaged people are inexplicably drawn. While the connection cannot be ignored, there's probably little here that "Lost" fanatics will find to help unravel the increasingly maddening mysteries in the series. Except perhaps this (***SPOILERS AHEAD***): King's suggestion in Duma Key is that one individual spirit (an entity, perhaps - it's not at all clear in the novel where Perse came from or whether she was ever human to begin with) controls the island, and she has the ability to lure people from as far away as Minnesota. She "influences" Edgar to come to the island, just as she had influenced Wireman to come twenty years earlier. It is even suggested (although neither Edgar nor Wireman - nor King, for that matter - makes this clear) that she was able to CAUSE the tragedies that led to both Edgar and Wireman looking for isolation in the first place. This may sound familiar to "Lost" fans - could Jacob and Perse be cut from the same cloth?
But this novel isn't a "Lost" spin-off, and whether you're a fan of the series or not, read Duma Key. It's a hefty novel at 600+ pages, but it's an elegant and engaging read that will sweep you up it its magic.
Book Review: Hooray!
Summary: 4 Stars
Stephen King's Duma Key is one of the more enjoyable books he has written in a while. With likeable characters, a steady pace slowly unfolding the events, and a nice tilt toward unexplained phenomenon, Stephen King weaves a story I got lost in completely (and that hasn't happened with his books recently).
Edgar Freemantle loses an arm and damages some memory portions of his brain in a freak accident. As a result he loses his "old life" and must start redefining himself again in a "new life" and in a new location: Duma Key, FL. Along the way he discovers new friends, new memories and a new talent that enables a sleeping evilness to take residence again on Duma Key, and into both Edgar's "old" and "new" lives.
Memory is the books central theme. Of things left behind and lost due to the passage of time. "It was like being given back your memory, and a person's memory is everything, really. Memory is identity. It's you." Memories shape our future, but sometimes they are gone forever and sometimes they come back whether we want them or not. Both Edgar and Wireman overcame past accidents that set their destinies together in motion, and Elizabeth's past is what they need to battle together. When Edgar loses his memory after the accident, mostly over words and trivial matters, it is the catalyst for his life change. However, for the rest of the novel he is searching those memories trying to bring them back. Memories of Melinda and Ilse, sleeping "like the old days" with Pam, and of course the feelings in his missing arm. "Speak, memories, that I may once more taste the green cup of the sea", Elizabeth reads to Edgar at one point. Some memories are worth keeping, but some should be forgotten and never brought out again, as Edgar realizes during his stay on Duma Key
Although I really enjoyed the first ¾ of the book an awful lot, the last ¼ seemed like a rush job to resolve the story. I would have been just as pleased if King did not feel the need to give us a charged-up carnival ride at the end. The slower paced style utilized during the majority of the book would have been sufficient for this reader. Let the conclusion slowly roll onto the beach like a lazy wave, instead of crashing like a powerful breaker.
There were a few things left unresolved, but should we expect anything less from King? Life is unresolved so why should his stories be tied-up nice and neat. Unique characters, a welcomed supernatural element, sustained creepy atmosphere and a very enjoyable read.
Book Review: King at His Best!
Summary: 4 Stars
It must be hard for an author to come back in full force so many years into his career. Stephen King has done just that with Duma Key. Not only is it an amazing novel, it's also one of his best, on par with It or The Shining.
It's obvious that this is a personal novel for King. The main character is a man edging out of his middle age who has an accident that leaves him scarred, both physically and mentally. He loses an arm, loses his wife, loses his joy for life. Following a friend's advice, he decides to take a break, leave it all and go to Florida for a while. This seems to mirror King's own life following his own accident a few years back.
He finds a house on Duma Key, a place that is remote, not frequented by many tourists. It is here that he will discover a talent he didn't know he had. It seems that Edgar can paint amazinly powerful surrealist pictures. And the more he paints, the more his sanity and his health improves. But it's all temporary.
With the help of the island's owner and her caretaker, Edgar learns to develop his talent. But as his pictures become more and more powerful, a dark force awakens on the island. Ghosts come back to life. Horrible things that only lived in his painting surface the earth. And, one by one, his friends and loved ones die. Edgar needs to uncover the secret of Duma Key before it is too late, before his worst nightmares come to life.
Yes, the novel has some very scary and intense moments. And although these moments are greatly appreciated, it is Edgar himself that brings this novel to life. This is probably one of King's best realised characters. He is strong and weak, flawed and powerful. You seem to feel his misery and his pain, his longing for the times when his life was happier and better.
The whole novel is written with such great pacing and tone that it is relentless. It never stops surprising you. It's amazing that, even after so many years, King can still surprise his readers in such a way. The only thing I have to reproach is the character of Edgar's wife. She seems too weak, too much like a caricature for you to really care for her and for the way she feels.
Still, King has mastered an incredible novel, one that is on par with the best he wrote in the 90s. Although I enjoyed last year's Lisey's Story, Duma Key has none of its long moments of exposition and flashbacks into the past. Duma Key is full of action, full of suspense, full of thrills. It's the kind of novel that only Stephen King can write.
Book Review: 150 pages too long - that's what Wireman says
Summary: 3 Stars
What I liked (spoilers, beware):
-The initial pages detailing the accident painted a very interesting character in Edgar Fremantle, and the marriage breakdown was likewise dramatic.
-The scene where the two little girls appeared in Edgar's house and spoke in the 'voice of the shells' was genuinely frightening.
-For a while, Edgar's supernatural abilities really held my interest, but then this was overdone, as the plot hinged so heavily on the paintings and that aspect of things was milked for more than it probably should have been. I mean, towards the end there, hurriedly sketching pictures while they were chasing down Perse ...? Come on.
-Edgar's wife Pam was one of the better characters King's done of late, even though she was pretty much in the background for most of it.
-Those "how to paint a picture" interjections were a really nice touch, a way to weave the haunting backstory into the current picture. Elizabeth's story, and what happened to her sisters, was a real highlight ... sad, scary and haunting.
-King's dialogue may have slipped pretty badly (and his pacing) but he's a better descriptive writer than ever.
What bothered me:
-the habit of echoing little phrases throughout - "It was RED", "that's what Wireman says" and the like - are really starting to grate. Like another reviewer pointed out, by a couple of hundred pages it's like inventing new cliches.
-I'm aware Mr King isn't a fan of George Bush, but I don't come to a horror novel to debate politics - please leave that to the blogging political pundits, where we can go and find it if we want it. It appears disrespectful to a reader to intrusively throw your political beliefs at them - we aren't here to be programmed or manipulated to a certain opinion, I come to fiction, especially speculative fiction, to escape.
-The character Ilse spoke like a 10 year old and acted like a bimbo on some kind of happy-drug. Her dialogue, like Wireman's, was quite forced and artificial. Wireman didn't entirely convince me.
-The whole thing was just too long, dragging out the art-gallery plot line and then lumping all the horror in at the end.
A better effort than most of the past decade's SK novels, but this book has proven to me at long last that the lean, hungry Stephen King who wrote The Shining, Pet Semetary and so on, is never going to write another book. While better than the smucking abomination that was Lisey's Story, Duma just doesn't hold a candle to King's early stuff.
Book Review: King back in total command
Summary: 5 Stars
I willingly admit that I disagree with those who have found fault with King's latest novels. I read Lisey's Story not long after my mother's death, and it moved me (okay, i was teary-eyed through most of it.)
I feel similarly moved by Duma Key, in a completely different way.
The novel starts with an uncharacteristic bang. We are introduced to Edward Freemantle and it's as if we are reading an extensive blog entry. We are thrown into this successful businessman's predicament within the first thirty pages. The characterization in most of Mr. King's previous work builds slowly within the confines of the story. In this novel there is little doubt that the economy of prose and the short story format of the first chapter leaves anyone who possesses an ounce of compassion completely engrossed with Edward and his future.
The specifics of the plot are best experienced unspoiled.
I consider this to be a companion to Lisey's story, and would have even if Mr. King had not made the comparison himself.
Both novels deal with loss - not the loss of college kids who get sucked into the lake in "The Raft" or the virtual extinction of human species in "The Stand".
Duma Key is primarily about internal loss, and the reader is swept along as if Edgar's losses are our own. Compassion emerges from this book both literally and figuratively in a way that is striking in it's originality for Mr. King.
Most reviewers have always focused upon Mr. King's ability to scare. This is a valid comparison that Mr. King has deservedly brought upon himself through his body of work, but there is much more than the supernatural beneath the surface of Duma Key.
The themes off loss and mortality have obviously been altered since Mr. Kings' accident. I have read every novel of his, starting with Carrie at Ten years old (I had no clue what it was about and had to re-read it a few years later).
I feel that there has been a quantum shift in the style and substance of his recent work. It astounds me that others cannot see this and cannot focus upon the fact that his writing now is both fresh, yet reminiscent of his most beautiful earlier works, such as "The Reach".
Yes it is scary. Yes it involves the supernatural.
Can you laugh and then cry before being scared witless, all within a few pages? Can you experience the thematic elements from Duma Key and see your life in the same light as Edgar sees his?
"Maybe si', maybe no."