Duma Key by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars “God always punishes us for what we can’t imagine” Stephen King’s Duma Key (2011) is an absorbing, ultimately disappointing novel about memory, artistic creation, family, friendship, and evil (and the something that’s “on the other side of the equation”). The first-person narrator is fifty-year-old Edgar Freemantle, who was a millionaire building contractor with a loving family until a crane crushed him inside his pick-up truck, taking his right arm and leaving him with serious trauma to his leg and brain. The latter caused him such frustrated rage when he couldn’t say the right words that he took it out violently on wife Pam. Acting on the advice of his anger management psychiatrist, Edgar relocates from Minnesota to Florida to try to do something he liked to do when younger, draw. The setting for his new life is a house he dubs Big Pink on Duma Key, a narrow island which is mysteriously undeveloped but for a handful of houses on the northern end. As Big Pink is perched overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, Edgar immediately begins drawing intense sunsets, the days “ending in glory.” The new setting and his new occupation seem to be healing him. But something’s funny. Edgar often feels a painful stinging itch in his phantom right arm (the real appendage was burned in a hospital incinerator), and the only thing that relieves it is making pictures, but when he draws or paints it’s as if something takes over, until he’s unsure how much of his impressive art works are him and how much Something Else. And his works are disturbing. For one thing, they surrealistically impose shells and flora and ships onto the sunsets, and for another they may be predicting violent events. And when he starts painting a series of pictures in which a derelict ship of the dead is approached by a rowboating girl wearing the dresses his beloved daughter wore when she was a girl-- Luckily, Edgar makes new friends in Florida, like Wireman, a wise middle-aged ex-lawyer who takes care of Elizabeth Eastlake, the wealthy old woman who owns the northern end of Duma Key and the houses on it. In addition to sprinkling his speech with Spanish, pithy sayings (“the gospel according to Wireman”), and allusions to books, movies, and music (he’s “an artesian well of useless information”), Wireman is able to almost telepathically understand Edgar’s feelings. This wouldn’t be connected to the coin-sized scar on his temple, would it? Elizabeth is fading away into dementia, but in her clear moments she aesthetically arranges china figurines on a table, has Edgar read poetry to her, and says cryptic things like, “You won’t want to, but you must.” This wouldn’t be connected to the scar on her temple, would it? The relationship between Edgar, Wireman, and Elizabeth is interesting, funny, and moving. What has brought them together on Duma Key and for what purpose? The novel is full of King’s fine writing: Moving moments, as when Edgar remembers his daughters as little girls. Life wisdom, like “When memory takes its strongest hold, our own bodies become ghosts haunting us with the gestures of our younger selves.” Interesting insights into artistic creation, like the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious minds. Vivid, evocative descriptions, like this: “The thunderheads stacked up, huge flat boats, black on the bottom and bruised purple through the middle. Every now and then lightning would flash inside them, and then they looked like brains filled with bad ideas. The gulf lost its color and went dead.” Scary moments, like when Edgar tries to visit the south end of the island with his daughter or when twins (from The Shining?!) visit him. Many humorous lines (like “I’d never seen a heron that didn’t look like a Puritan elder thinking which witch to burn”) and scenes (like when Edgar and Wireman first meet). And many allusions to high culture (Shakespeare, Dickens, Dickenson, etc.) and popular culture (the Three Stooges, Pepe Le Pew, Peter Straub, etc.). This being a book about art, there are many references to modern painters, like Wyeth, Dali, and Hockney. (Sometimes I wondered how a building contractor could invoke Scooby Doo one moment and quote The Tempest the next--But the references are neat.) Finally, as I’ve found with others of his novels (like It), this one is most impressive before we learn what’s going on supernaturally. The more the nature of the ancient, malevolent force (gendered female here) is revealed, the more mystery and human agency decrease, and despite my believing in his main characters I often find King’s supernatural horror to be absurd and contrived. If a sentient evil power (“old when the children of Israel were grubbing in gardens in Egypt”) can make people far away murder people they have no reason to harm or suffer heart attacks or forget vital things, etc., then when she doesn't do something she could do, it all ends up feeling like King’s contrivance. Furthermore, if the evil is “not even close to human, something other, beyond human understanding,” human perfidy is diminished. In The Shining the supernatural evil force in the Overlook Hotel resonates with Jack Torrance’s inner alcoholic devil and doesn’t make Wendy and Danny do things against their natures. In Duma Key King tries to balance the supernatural evil force with something benign that has his heroes act on intuition to good effect, but then that diminishes human goodness and makes his book feel like a pseudo-Christian allegory. Thus, my favorite parts of the novel come in the first half, watching Edgar rehabilitate his body and mind, Edgar and Wireman hang out with Elizabeth, and Edgar discover his painting jones and related psychic ability. I also liked reading about artistic creation (a series of How to Draw a Picture vignettes reveal King’s advice to artists—and writers—like truth is in the details, be brave, and don’t quit). John Slattery reads the audiobook just right, with clarity and understanding without over doing it. Fans of It should like Duma Key, but I prefer Misery, The Shining, and Doctor Sleep. View all my reviews
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