Stephen King - Duma Key Review

Life can change forever in the time it takes to blink. Edgar Freemantle's life hung a U-turn in a gruesome accident on his own construction site. The unfortunate intersection scrambled his brain, crushed his hip, and left his right arm somewhere under a 100-ton crane. Six months later, Edgar's partially rehabilitated but fully divorced. That's when his shrink suggests he take up a hobby. "I used to draw a little," he mused.

Life can change forever in time it takes to blink, or it can take longer: Edgar may have thought the changes were done, but he was wrong.

Leaving Minnesota's ice and snow behind; Edgar takes up residence at an isolated Florida beach house he dubs "Big Pink." Somehow his temporary quarters become his Muse: his first night there he begins to draw, and then to paint; works of a power he'd had no sense dwelt in him. It's as if something in the accident jarred loose a torrent inside that unquiet brain; his art pours off him like some sort of multicolored sweat. Some of the works frighten him; especially the ones he could swear he's painted with an arm with an itch he can no longer scratch....

The other residents of Duma Key are his octogenarian landlady, Elizabeth, and her companion Wireman. The three are bound together by more than geography, however; for a great evil is awakening on the tiny island, an evil that summoned them to witness its rebirth. It wakes for the first time in eighty years, wakes even while the one person who knew how to vanquish it to the darkness whence it came slips slowly into the darkness within her mind.

If Edgar Freemantle thinks the changes in his life are over, he has another think a-comin'.

Stephen King is back. It's more than publishing yet another novel; he's back in the sense that the book reprises the patterns that helped propel him onto the best-seller lists in the '70s and '80s. Though his earlier writing (Carrie, The Dead Zone, and Firestarter) depicted horror as ordinary people with unsettling powers; he cemented his reputation as a powerful writer by employing a different paradigm: the demonic possession of ordinary items. Everyday things become inhabited by nightmarish evil; horrors straight from H. P. Lovecraft. King fans will remember the '58 Fury in Christine, a family dog in Cujo, or small items in Leland Gaunt's shop, Needful Things. King's skill at imbuing ordinary objects with demonic abilities is one of his greatest draws as a horror writer, along with an uncanny ability to ferret out people's unspoken fears. In Duma Key, King applies both skills; skills that have lain dormant in recent years through the Dark Tower series and a sort of literary potpourri.

With this return to his literary roots, King delights many long-time fans. But does Duma Key compare to earlier works like Christine? King's latest is more complex (or, perhaps, simply more lengthy) than his earlier work. Though the infesting evil on the island is as monstrous as those in earlier novels, the unmasking of evil and ultimate showdown of man against monstrosity are more protracted than in past years. If you think I'm suggesting King needed a bit more editing, you're right. Yet I'd find it difficult to decide which subplot and which character (except, see below) could be removed without leaving a gaping hole in the novel.

The power of King's horror writing arises from a theme of ordinary people facing extraordinary situations. For three of King's characters in Duma Key, this rings true: Edgar and Wireman are examples of this "ordinary man" trope; while Elizabeth, like Mother Abigail before her in The Stand (also a Freemantle), is a classic of another type: a symbol of strength within a failing body. Yet Duma Key's climax, replete with heart-pounding action and page-turning suspense as it may be, fails to ring true: the presence of one character, Jack Cantori, at that "battle" seems illogical. He lacks a reason to be there; so why is he? Therein lies the only significant flaw, other than perhaps King's callous treatment of Edgar's exwife, to be found in Duma Key. Yet for this reader, it left a faintly sour impression upon finishing.

Overall, King once more "dances with the one what brung him." Duma Key represents a return to the sort of horror fiction that made Stephen King a household name a generation ago, and that's certainly a good thing. That it could have been better is almost beside the point... almost.