Stephen King''s “Duma Key” ventures to an all-but-uninhabited Florida island where the
shells groan at high tide, tennis
balls appear unexpectedly, foliage
grows ominously quickly, and at least one heron flies upside-down.
Given this combination of
author and setting, it’s inevitable that
something terribly undead will show up before the book is over.But Mr. King’s use of horror is not what it used to be. It may still
be the impetus for his stories, but it is no longer the foremost reason
they’re interesting. Sure, he can still use supernatural effects to
scare the wits out of you. But lately he also shows off other
interests. In the wake of the 1999 roadside accident that permanently
altered his consciousness, he has turned the evanescence of health and
sanity into his books’ most disturbing source of fear. “Duma
Key” is about characters whose near-death experiences have given them
psychic powers. That may make it sound fanciful, but this novel is
frank and well grounded. Mr. King’s main character, Edgar Freemantle,
is a regular Joe with only a few unusual qualities. One: He has struck
it rich in the construction business. Another: He has lost an arm in an
accident. And also this: Unlike may other people whose lives suddenly
go off course, he knows exactly what hit him. It was a construction
crane, and it smashed him to jelly.As the book begins, Edgar is
in the process of moving from Minnesota to Florida. His doctor has
ordered a change of scenery. So he arrives on Duma and moves into a big
pink house with what is quite literally a drop-dead view of the sunset.
“Salmon Point, No. 13,” says the young assistant who drives him to his
new home, in a nice display of the author’s mischief. “I hope you’re
not superstitious.”Mr. King takes his teasingly sweet time in
revealing exactly what’s going on here. But it turns out that the
sunsets make Edgar want to draw. And he’s good at it. And the details
that crop up in his pictures have a way of prefiguring real events or
even causing them, especially when those events are deadly. Elizabeth
Eastlake, the ancient grande dame in the nearby house, has weirdly
powerful artistic talents of her own.Like Elizabeth, and like
Wireman, the affectionate ex-lawyer who takes care of her, Edgar lives
in a befogged and unsteady mental state. Each of them has suffered some
kind of head injury; each of them endures what Mr. King calls “weird
slip-slides,” moments of maddening confusion. In such an
atmosphere the rules of fantasy might run wild, but Mr. King constructs
this story with patience and rigor. His own past tendency to wander
untethered into the
world of dreams is under control. So is his
editors’ tendency to let that happen.The winding narrative of
“Duma Key” is interspersed with short chapters on the subject of “How
to Draw a Picture.” There are 12 of these, and they incorporate
creeping, gradual revelations about Elizabeth’s fraught family history.
(“You’re not going to tell me he raised six girls out here,” Edgar says
to Wireman, upon hearing the tale of Elizabeth’s father. “That’s just
too gothic.”) These chapters also offer direct advice about how the
artist should treat memory, but they need not be high-minded. Mr. King
more readily illustrates this, to the point where he doesn’t need to
explain it. However simple his storytelling sounds, it exerts a
relentless tidal pull. The expert scattering of secrets
throughout this narrative helps to keep it moving. At first Mr. King
takes an unhurried approach to introducing Edgar’s history (with two
adult daughters, as well as an ex-wife who’d “taken off the Freemantle
uniform and quit the team”) and Edgar’s amazement at the spookier
aspects of Florida. But he picks up the pace when “Duma Key” reaches
its puzzle stage. The last third of the book goes into
overdrive, leading each of the people and objects strewn innocently
through the story to some kind of diabolical turn. The graphic artist Mark Stutzman has delivered yet another
great-looking cover that mimics Mr. King’s hidden-in-plain-sight tricks.Although
this last part ought to be the book’s most furious, the less
action-packed aspects of the story manage to be just as compelling. Mr.
King generates suspense just following the way Edgar struggles with his
memory. Likewise there is drama in the way he experiences phantom
sensations of a lost arm, deals with his loved ones or tries to figure
out what kind of Twilight Zone he’s wandered into. Then there
are Edgar’s drawings, which evolve from innocent landscapes to the
stuff of a full-fledged art career. Mr. King seems to have particular
fun with the process by which Edgar finds himself becoming the toast of
Sarasota and a lauded “American primitive” to boot.“Frogs the
size of Cocker Spaniel puppies” are among the beastly things unleashed
by Mr. King once the art appreciation stops — and the final melee
begins. But his book has raised its ante in careful stages. So
foreshadowing (“or so it seemed to me then”) gives way slowly to dark
nuance. (“There’s something here, and it’s acting on me. Is it possible
it even called me?”) Then comes terrible certainty. (“I felt it and
knew: the three of us were here because something wanted us here.”) And
then the menace is at the door. (“Horror waiting to happen. Inbound on
rotted sails.”) And then it’s inside. And then there’s no reaching
forward — for fear that “something cold and wet and draped in seaweed
should reach back.”GET THIS BOOK FREE.BUY SELL RENT BOOKS FROM THE LINK BELOW.