Or do you?
Much of King’s work has been adapted for film and television, at times with the creepy, supernatural content excised. Dolores Claiborne and The Shawshank Redemption come to mind. Did you know those are Stephen King works? I read Dolores Claiborne after seeing the film and…Surprise!…supernatural dust bunnies found nowhere in the film version.
Regardless of horror content, King’s writing is engaging and down to earth. You feel what the characters feel. You want to be their friend and learn more about them. You want to help them get through the ordeal facing them and, with King, it is always a doozie.
Duma Key lives up to that, with the added bonus of being written after King was struck by a van while taking his daily walk and nearly killed. The main character suffers a similarly devastating accident, and you cannot help but wonder how much of the trauma, anger, pain, and rehabilitation described in the book King actually experienced during his recovery. I was not distracted by the wondering. For me, it added dimension and believability to every aspect of main character Edgar Freemantle’s rehabilitation.
An excerpt from the book jacket at StephenKing.com to introduce you to some of the characters:
A terrible construction site accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. A marriage that produced two lovely daughters suddenly ends, and Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived the injuries that could have killed him. He wants out. His psychologist, Dr. Kamen, suggests a "geographic cure," a new life distant from the Twin Cities and the building business Edgar grew from scratch. And Kamen suggests something else.
"Edgar, does anything make you happy?"
"I used to sketch."
"Take it up again. You need hedges . . . hedges against the night."
Edgar leaves Minnesota for a rented house on Duma Key, a stunningly beautiful, eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico and the tidal rattling of shells on the beach call out to him, and Edgar draws. A visit from Ilse, the daughter he dotes on, starts his movement out of solitude. He meets a kindred spirit in Wireman, a man reluctant to reveal his own wounds, and then Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman whose roots are tangled deep in Duma Key.
Now Edgar paints, sometimes feverishly, his exploding talent both a wonder and a weapon. Many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth's past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.
The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory and the nature of the supernatural--Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.
The book breaks down into three parts:
- Edgar’s first life in Minnesota, where we get a retrospective account of his accident and experience the beginning of his rehabilitation and the end of his marriage;
- Edgar’s second life in Florida, where he discovers his talent as an artist and we meet several colorful characters central to the remainder of the story;
- The creepy horror stuff King is known for.
Reviewers who pan the book complain the story is boring because nothing happens until the last third of the book. And by “nothing happens,” they mean there is no horror of the likes found in King’s previous works. That is completely true for those looking for chill up your spine, hold me and inadvertently touch my boob horror.
There is, however, horror of the normal, every day, it-could-actually-happen kind of horror, which makes it all the more disturbing. Without spoiling the story for those who have not yet read it, let me say that when I read the book again, I will skip the parts about Monica Goldstein and Tina Garibaldi. They are too graphic, too real, too “this is why I don’t watch the news” for me but they are an integral part of the story. They are not presented in the book as surprises or Big Reveals so I don’t think I am spoiling anything for you by mentioning them here.
At this point, I want to mention the most important thing I can tell you about this book: DON’T READ IT. Not at first anyway.
What I mean is: listen to the audiobook read by John Slattery. It makes all the difference. If you want to go back and read the book later, by all means do so, but by then the characters will be alive in your mind the way Slattery presented them. Dialogue that comes across as forced or just plain odd in the book makes perfect sense when you hear it from Slattery.
My only complaints about this story have to do with foreshadowing and plausibility.
Foreshadowing is where the author suggests, or in this case outright tells you about, plot developments that come later in the story. Much later, as it happens. It creates suspense, which I suppose is the point, but is still MOST ANNOYING.
Plausibility or believability is tough to complain about when you are talking about Stephen King and his spooky, supernatural creations. One MUST suspend disbelief to some extent. It’s just too bad we have to actually meet the monsters in the third part of the book. Terror is so much more delicious when confined to our imagination. I found the physical monsters a bit of a let down.
It is the non-supernatural implausibility, however, that sticks in my craw. Hopefully without giving too much away, let me say that if I was a one-armed man, I would be telling my two armed friend to get his ass down in the dark and scary hole with me to battle evil, not proclaim I must do it all by myself.
But then it wouldn’t be as suspenseful and fun, would it?
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Disclaimer: I purchased this product on my own and was not compensated for this review.
Duma Key audiobook at Audible.com
Amazon.com: all versions of the book (paperback, hard cover, CD, Kindle, etc.):
Duma Key: A Novel
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Along the lines of my previous post:
When did this:
Become this?
Speaking of reading on your electronic device, I have two words for you:
Calibre (e-book management on your PC or Mac), and
Stanza (e-reader that can access your Calibre library and download books wirelessly. Currently only for iDevices, though.)
I didn’t think I needed Stanza because I already have both the iBooks and Kindle apps on my iPad but I was having trouble getting Calibre to recognize my iPad when plugged in so I tried out Stanza. Did I mention I just click a button in Calibre to turn on the content server and Stanza on my iPad can see my entire library of ebooks on my PC and download any I choose to my iPad wirelessly? I did? IT BEARS REPEATING.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have terribly important things to consider, like whether I should brush my teeth or have another mug of tea and read the rest of Bossypants before I venture out into the world today.
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