Duma Key
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| Duma Key | |
 First edition cover |
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| Author | Stephen King |
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| Country | USA |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Scribner |
| Publication date | January 22, 2008 |
| Media type | print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 611 |
| ISBN | 978-1416552512 |
| Preceded by | Lisey's Story |
| Followed by | Under the Dome |
Duma Key is a psychological horror novel by American novelist Stephen King. The book reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It is King's first novel to be set in Florida or Minnesota. The dust jacket features holographic lettering.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The story begins shortly after a Minneapolis construction company owner named Edgar Freemantle barely survives a horrific on-site accident where his truck was struck and crushed by a runaway crane. Though he has survived, Freemantle's right arm is amputated, and severe injuries to his head cause Edgar to have problems with speech, vision, and memory. Because of the excruciating pain resulting from the accident and the subsequent recovery, Edgar also has violent mood swings and thoughts of suicide. The accident also takes a toll on his personal life. After Edgar attacks his wife Pam twice -- one time stabbing her with a plastic knife, the other strangling her -- she files for divorce while he is still in recovery from his injuries.
On the advice of his psychologist, Dr. Kamen, Edgar takes "a geographical", a year-long vacation meant for rest and further recovery. He decides to rent a beach house on Duma Key, a (fictional) island off the west coast of Florida, after reading about it in a travel brochure. The beach house he is renting turns out to be place named Salmon Point, though Edgar nicknames it "Big Pink," because of its rich pink color. Also on the advice of Dr. Kamen, Edgar revives his old hobby of sketching after he settles in Big Pink. Big Pink looms dangerously over the gulf, with the tide actually brushing past the pilings at night, causing a grating sound of shells that Edgar describes as the house talking to him. He settles into the house with the help of Jack Cantori, a hired local college student who buys his groceries, sets up his cable, and gets him whatever odds and ends he needs and later becomes a crucial character in the course of the book.
As he becomes more and more involved in his new hobby, painting, it quickly becomes an obsession, working with a furious energy and in a daze. Edgar's right arm begins to itch of phantom limb sensation and it forces him to bring up subconscious images in his paintings, some of which he begins to realize have a dark power to them, though he is able to focus and use the gift for a positive effect, healing his friend Wireman by removing a bullet from his brain through his painting.
Soon after this his younger daughter, Ilse, comes to visit him and during this trip they reconnect and he paints The End of the Game. While exploring the island they drive past an extraordinarily old looking woman whom they jokingly name "The Bride of the Godfather" However once in the interior of the island Ilse becomes horribly sick and Edgar is forced to reverse all the way through the jungle and into the driveway of this mysterious old woman's mansion.
After her departure he slowly tries to continue recuperating taking painful walks along the beach, creating a "numbers game" that he eventually discards after suddenly realizing he has been babying himself with it. It is on these "great beach walks" that he begins to see in the distance and gradually getting closer with each walk a man far in the distance sitting out on the beach, and eventually he meets up with him. This character, Jerome Wireman, who is always referred to as just "Wireman" becomes his closest friend, is a hired companion for an older woman, Elizabeth Eastlake, who has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease at the time that Edgar arrives on the island, though it rapidly progresses over the next few months.
Freemantle soon discovers that Miss Eastlake owns the entire island, as well as quite a large sum of liquid assets. She takes a liking to him when after being introduced to him he unravels the plotline she has set up in her imaginary ceramic town, and asks that he call her Elizabeth. He agrees to read poetry to her.
[edit] Paintings
A number of Edgar's paintings play significant roles in the novel and are described in great detail, both in their creation and how they look, beginning with his very first extensive drawing upon arrival at Big Pink, a ghostly picture of a ship on the sunset titled Hello. He quickly experiments with a number of sunsets, which all fail to match up to "Hello".
Although moving slowly and unsurely at first, he rapidly increases in talent and figures out how to replicate the surrealism of his first drawing by adding objects hovering in the background of the sunsets, beginning with his Sunset with Conch.
[edit] Characters
The novel contains an expansive cast of minor characters while maintaining a rather small circle of central players.
[edit] Major Characters
- Edgar Freemantle: is the central character in the book, which focuses on his struggles and it is eventually him that takes the lead in the climatic fight against Perse.
- Jerome Wireman: is a former lawyer from Omaha who moved down to Florida after losing his wife and daughter, surviving a suicide attempt, and being fired from his law firm.
- Elizabeth Eastlake: a wealthy heiress and former art patron suffering from Alzheimers, she plays a major role in background of the story and in leading the protagonists to stopping the evil force present on the island.
- Pam Freemantle: Edgar's wife who divorces him at the beginning of the novel. During the novel she has several affairs, but gradually reconciles with him until the events of the climax begin.
- Ilse Freemantle: Edgar's younger daughter who remains the only person from his "past life" to stay close to him and who is the person he loves most in the world.
- Jack Cantori: local college student who serves as Edgar's chauffer and handyman, keeping the house stocked with groceries and picking up whatever odds and ends he needs. It is his quick thinking that allows them to trap Perse at the end of the novel.
- Perse: the evil force manifested on Duma Key, she first reached out through young Elizabeth Eastlake to get back to the surface from the ocean before being trapped in freshwater, (she is left powerless by it), until the present day. She commands a ship of damned souls, and while not human is said to have something distinctly feminine about her, and she is manifest in an old china doll with a red cloak. She is again put back to sleep at the end of the novel though the characters fear she'll still eventually escape again. Her full name, Persephone, and her description and place are all generally influenced and taken from the Greek Goddess Persephone, (see above), who was the Queen of the Underworld.
[edit] Minor Characters
There are a large number of minor characters in the book who have only passing significance to the main characters or to the plot of the book, including large numbers of friends and family from Edgar's "other life" as well as Wireman's family and boss, a number of characters with loose association to the two, and the various people who rent houses on Duma Key during the tourism season.
[edit] Critical and popular reception
Critical reception was generally positive, with some criticisms being outweighed on the whole by the positive, a fact noted by USAToday and declared by King in that same article as a byproduct of the fact that "[...]a lot of today's reviewers grew up reading my fiction. Most of the old critics who panned anything I wrote are either dead or retired".[1] Most critics noted the personal quality of what King was writing about, having suffered a similarly horrific and sudden accident.
The New York Times printed a fairly positive review by Janet Maslin which called the novel "frank and well grounded" and lauded the brevity and imagery of the novel, as well as the furious pace of the last third,[2] while a somewhat less enthusiastic but still positive review by Mark Rahner was published by the Seattle Times that while criticizing King for a little unoriginality and long-windedness, ultimately praises King's characters and the terror of the novel.[3]
Richard Rayner, in a review published by the Los Angeles Times called the novel a "beautiful, scary idea" and lauds it for its gritty down to earth characters. However while also praising the writing itself, "He, (King), writes as always with energy and drive and a wit and grace for which critics often fail to give him credit", criticizes it for losing its originality and believability towards the conclusion, stating "The creepy and largely interior terror of the first two-thirds of the story dissipates somewhat when demon sailors come clanking out of the ocean."[4] Similarly, the Boston Globe review, writing by Erica Noonan, called the novel a "welcome return" to a similar style of some King's better novels.[5]
[edit] References to Other King Works
- Edgar shares his surname with a character in The Stand. In The Stand the personification of good, the leader of the 'good' survivors of the Captain Trips plague, and a prophet of God is named Abagail Freemantle.
- Edgar's email address is EFree19, the number 19 played a large role in King's The Dark Tower. The number 19 is also referenced in Pam Freemantle's address, Pamorama667 (6+6+7=19).
- Edgar Freemantle makes a reference to Ka in a metaphor, mentioning that life is like a wheel.
- Edgar's power of making his painting come to life is similar to Patrick Danville, a character in the novels Insomnia and The Dark Tower. Both have a notable artistic ability, and can create and remove items in real life by drawing and erasing them. Both also erased individuals in real life by this technique. Unlike Freemantle, Danville had possessed an amazing artistic ability from a very young age.
- Duma Key also references to, though indirectly, Shirley Jackson's, (a writer whom King has called one of his great inspirations), The Haunting of Hill House through the twin motif, thus also referencing his other novels either also using that motif and/or being influenced by, namely The Shining and Rose Red.
[edit] See also
- Memory, a related short story by King. King describes it as "the first chapter of Duma Key all kind of dressed up" in the Lilja's Library interview.
[edit] External links
- Interview with King in which he discusses Duma Key
- King's official site
- USAToday Interview
- New York Times Review
- Seattle Times Review
- Los Angeles Times Review
- The Boston Globe Review
