Duma Key by Stephen King

I used to be a huge Stephen King fan when I was in junior high. I read all of his early stuff and was genuinely terrified by it, which of course was the reaction I was going for. But in the early 1990s, I began moving away from King (I think Needful Things was the last book I read as a new release), and didn’t go back until the 2006 novel Lisey’s Story. I enjoyed that one, mostly because it was such a departure from what King had done in the past, so I decided to give his latest novel Duma Key a try as well.

While there were some elements of the vintage Kind stories that I remember from all those years ago, I found that this new book wasn’t as engrossing as I had hoped. It started out well, but soon petered out, culminating with a lame ending that didn’t seem like much of a payoff considering all that had gone before it.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The story opens shortly after 57-year-old Edgar Freemantle was in a serious accident at a construction site. The pickup truck he was sitting in was crushed by a crane, causing Edgar to lose his right arm entirely and damaging his right leg severely. There was also some head trauma, so Edgar now struggles with words, forgets things, and battles extreme rage.

After Edgar’s wife of 25 years asks for a divorce, Edgar decides to take his doctor’s advice and get away while he rehabs. Being a millionaire, Edgar has plenty of options open to him. He ends up choosing to rent a house on Duma Key off the coast of Florida for a few months, and soon leaves Minnesota for the new place.

Duma Key is pretty much deserted, giving Edgar plenty of time to think and paint — a hobby his doctor advised him to take up again. After a while, Edgar starts feeling some “phantom limb sensation” where his right arm used to be, and notices that these feelings coincide with an urgent need to paint. When this urgency surfaces, Edgar goes into a trance-like state and paints some very good stuff, all without being much aware of what he’s doing.

As the story progresses, Edgar learns that there’s some kind of sinister supernatural force or being behind his sudden artistic prowess. With the help of a fellow Duma Key inhabitant named Wireman, as well as a college-boy assistant named Jack Cantori, Edgar must uncover the source of this being, destroy it, and make things right with the world again.

My Reaction: I didn’t like Duma Key very much, as it was an incredibly uneven book. For one thing, King spent so much time developing the main character that other characters suffered in the process. While readers knew all about Edgar, I was left wanting to learn more about Elizabeth Eastlake’s history — in a more coherent form than the bits and pieces King scattered throughout the main narrative.

In addition, I thought too much focus was placed on Edgar’s whole painting process. One or two detailed descriptions would have been sufficient, but King went way overboard and described so many that I lost count. I know that Edgar’s paintings were crucial to the plot, but still… the author could have easily trimmed the book by 100 pages (without detriment) by eliminating a bunch of the painting scenes, and readers like me would have been greatly appreciative of that.

Also, I was very confused about Elizabeth’s part in the whole Perse situation. Was Elizabeth helping Edgar or was she out to hurt him? Because wasn’t it Elizabeth who told Edgar to sell as many of his paintings as possible? But then it turned out that selling was a mistake because those who ended up with paintings (Kamen, Tom Riley, Ilse) died as a result. Shouldn’t Elizabeth have known something like that could happen? Wouldn’t it have been better to advise Edgar to burn or otherwise destroy the paintings? That didn’t make sense to me.

The final “showdown” with Perse was a huge letdown as well. Throughout the novel, King spent time trying to build this doll up as some kind of overwhelming force that has cost so many people their lives over the years. So I was naturally expecting more of a struggle between Edgar and Perse than we actually got. He basically just scooped the thing up, stuffed it in a flashlight, and that was that. Granted, there’s not much that an inanimate doll could do without having human instruments to work with, but I was hoping that Perse would turn Wireman into a killing machine or something — anything — that would put Edgar’s life in danger and make the whole situation seem more urgent.

Speaking of urgency, that’s what was lacking in this whole novel. Edgar was never in any immediate danger, and could easily have just taken Perse up on the offer to walk away and never look back. This kind of take it or leave it conflict doesn’t do much to ratchet up the tension in a story, so most of the book was actually very boring.

On the whole Duma Key suffers from an overly long buildup, little conflict, lack of scary elements, and a ho-hum resolution. This is not the Stephen King I remember reading in junior high school, that’s for sure!