Duma Key: A Novel by Stephen King
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Book Reviews of Duma Key: A Novel
Book Review: Making Florida Scary, The King is Back
Summary: 5 Stars
Ok, before I begin, let me say that I am biased because the book is set in Florida. I was born in Tampa and except for a brief 3-year study/work trip to Japan, have lived there all my life. It is so cool to see my hometown in print. Actually Tampa shows up a lot in Duma Key. I often go to Davis Island and know the little shops and cafes that are described.
Second, I started reading Stephen King when I was 15-years old. The first novel that caught my mind was IT. I loved IT. I even like it better than the fan favorite, The Stand. So every King book to me is judged aganist IT. Duma Key holds up with me just as fine as IT, not better, but at least in the same room of the house.
For awhile I was getting tired of King. When Lisey's Story came out I didn't rush out to buy it. The first time in my life I didn't buy a Stephen King novel on the release day. Nor did I ask for a copy for Christmas. I read the short story, The Mist, also when I was 15 back in junior high and when I saw the movie last Christmas, I was so disappointed. Then 1408 came out and that renewed my interest. Then a friend told me that Duma Key was filled with stories on Florida and that Tampa, St Pete, and Sarasota are all mentioned. That was enough for me to give it a chance.
Duma Key is a wonderful quick read. It doesn't have all the long drawn out character build up and plot points that occur in so many of King's novels. It takes me a 100 pages or so to get into a King book and get passed all that. Duma still has hidden plot points but they are done so subtley this time that it wasn't annoying.
The entire novel is first class and will no doubt be read years after. But the last 200 pages are the best. Sometimes you have to wait that long before you get into the funhouse and see what's behind the curtain that's being pulled apart by grimy rotting skeletal fingers. The ending is a fast rollercoaster ride that King is famous for. He doesn't diappoint in the ending. I won't go into details but I didn't feel cheated at the end. I felt cheated at the ending for The Mist (both the movie which made it worse and the story in Skeleton Crew), The Stand, and the worst ending for me is still the last book in the Dark Tower series. That just stunk.
Duma isn't like that. It ended like a warm Florida sunset.
By far my favorite character in the book is Wireman. He has so much good humor and cheer that you want someone like that for a friend. Just drinking green tea, staring at the Gulf, and talking.
Most of the places mentioned in Duma Key are real and I've been to a few of the places mentioned. King takes those places and makes them real and offers his own slant which I have never thought of.
This is the first of his Florida books and let's hope there is another Florida book and that its just as good or even better.
If like me, you thought of giving up on King after years of reading everything fresh off the press, give Duma Key a read. He's still got the power to entertain. I think the new setting away from Maine is doing him good.
Book Review: Five on the King Scale
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the first Stephen King I'd read in quite some time and for awhile I couldn't put it down. It's definitely a King novel-but still it's different in other ways. I have always noticed common plot elements or mechanisms throughout some of King's novels having read stacks of them as a kid-I'll number them as I go. There is quite often a(1.) car crash which in this case is in the form of a construction accident. Millionaire construction company owner Edgar Freemantle, the book's main character, goes through a grueling rehabilitation program with a severed arm and bum hip. In the process he loses his former life, gets a divorce, and suffers through uncontrollable fits of temper and excruciating pain. At the end of the first section, Freemantle's shrink suggests he do a "geographic" and he relocates down to Florida to recuperate and rediscover his talent for painting.
So goes the first section and I was hooked in. King has a quick pace and his prose writing is superb. The horror doesn't start until well into the last section of the book when Freemantle suddenly becomes a regional phenomenon through his paintings which manifest a supernatural power. Along the way, there's a (2.) spooky old lady and Freemantle has a (3.)drinking buddy. The story slowly builds up from a psychological novel into a horror story which is different than his early works. Still, there are some scary moments throughout the book. (4.)In the end he lines 'em all up and kills everybody like he always does but it seems to work. There is also the obligatory(5.)monster that suddenly appears on the scene when things fall apart. The fight with the alligator in the end shows King's strayed a long way from Maine. The ending is somewhat anti-climatic but it slowly grows on you.
I was actually a little put off by the horror sections because for 2/3's of the way through this book, it was the best written novel I've read in some time. This novel is somewhat autobiographic in nature, obviously considering King's recent history. The way he describes the day to day life of someone who has been seriously injured is, perhaps, masterful. The relationship with his youngest daughter, a central part of the story, is also well portrayed and realistic. King can make you believe what is happening is real and than everything goes to pieces when the horror sections start. That for me is one of the best parts of his talent.
I also like the way he uses the paintings that Freemantle creates to scare the living daylights out of you.
This is a quick read, pick it up and you can blast through a forest of pages in no time. I recommend it for non-King fans to.Duma Key: A Novel
Book Review: One of Stephen King's best
Summary: 5 Stars
Yes, it's scary. Yes, it's long. But this new novel is more than just another Stephen King book. With a streamlined style and a plot that's never predictable, it's King at his crisp, clear, page-turning best. Before you read further, let me acknowledge I'm incredibly biased here. Not only have I been a Stephen King fan ever since 1975's 'Salem's Lot, I live on a small island off the west coast of Florida, exactly where this story takes place. Great sunsets, a beach lined with huge rental homes, a populace of "the newly wed and the living dead".... they're all part and parcel to this story, and all around me as I sit here typing on my little porch.
Beyond the colorful setting, "Duma Key" combines the concepts of bodies gone bad and creativity gone wild -- typical King material -- with the everlasting powers of friendship and love. It's a great beach read, an outstanding character study, a terrific horror story and, eventually, an uplifting tale of moral redemption.
Obviously that's plenty of raw material, but King masters it all, with a writing style that's better than ever. As always his imagery is simply stated yet memorably vivid -- waves, for example, crash on the beach with the sound of "the breath of some large sleeping creature" -- and even the most basic sentences and paragraphs have a perfect mix of energy, grace and wit. This time, however, King really takes his time, with a slow pace that allows for plenty of character development and story detail. Lead character Edgar Freemantle is a bit edgier than the standard King protagonist (he loses his arm in a freak accident, and has trouble controlling his rage) and I was especially riveted by the portrayal of the old woman Elizabeth Eastlake, a lifelong islander with Alzheimer's disease. Some of the best moments occur when nothing much is happening, such as when Edgar argues with his wife or the many times he struggles with his sanity.
Eventually, of course, the plot takes off with a vengeance, and soon the pace winds so tight that by the time terror knocks at the door, you just know it's coming in.
I don't know if I've ever pored through so many pages so fast.
My other favorite Stephen King books are:
The Shining
The Stand
On Writing
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: 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."