by Stephen King
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Product Description
No more than a dark pencil line on a blank page. A horizon line, maybe. But also a slot for blackness to pour through...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.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: It would be impossible to convey the wonder and the horror of Stephen King's latest novel in just a few words. Suffice it to say that Duma Key, the story of Edgar Freemantle and his recovery from the terrible nightmare-inducing accident that stole his arm and ended his marriage, is Stephen King's most brilliant novel to date (outside of the Dark Tower novels, in which case each is arguably his best work). Duma Key is as rich and rewarding as Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (yes, that Shawshank Redemption), and as truly scary as anything King has written (and that's saying a lot). Readers who have "always wanted to try Stephen King" but never known where to start should try a few pages of Duma Key--the frankness with which Edgar reveals his desperate, sputtering rages and thoughts of suicide is King at the top of his game. And that's just the first thirty pages... --Daphne Durham
Duma Key: Where It All Began
A Note from Chuck Verrill, the Longtime Editor of Stephen King
In the spring of 2006 Stephen King told me he was working on a Florida story that was beginning to grow on him. "I'm thinking of calling it Duma Key," he offered. I liked the sound of that--the title was like a drumbeat of dread. "You know how Lisey's Story is a story about marriage?" he said. "Sure," I answered. The novel hadn't yet been published, but I knew its story well: Lisey and Scott Landon--what a marriage that was. Then he dropped the other shoe: "I think Duma Key might be my story of divorce." Pretty soon I received a slim package from a familiar address in Maine. Inside was a short story titled "Memory"--a story of divorce, all right, but set in Minnesota. By the end of the summer, when Tin House published "Memory," Stephen had completed a draft of Duma Key, and it became clear to me how "Memory" and its narrator, Edgar Freemantle, had moved from Minnesota to Florida, and how a story of divorce had turned into something more complex, more strange, and much more terrifying. If you read the following two texts side by side--"Memory" as it was published by Tin House and the opening chapter of Duma Key in final form--you'll see a writer at work, and how stories can both contract and expand. Whether Duma Key is an expansion of "Memory" or "Memory" a contraction of Duma Key, I can't really say. Can you? --Chuck Verrill "Memory"
 Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own. That's what Kamen says. I tell him I never chased the memory of my accident. Some things, I say, are better forgotten.Maybe, but that doesn’t matter, either. That's what Kamen says. My name is Edgar Freemantle. I used to be a big deal in building and construction. This was in Minnesota, in my other life. I was a genuine American-boy success in that life, worked my way up like a motherf---er, and for me, everything worked out. When Minneapolis–St. Paul boomed, The Freemantle Company boomed. When things tightened up, I never tried to force things. But I played my hunches, and most of them played out well. By the time I was fifty, Pam and I were worth about forty million dollars. And what we had together still worked. I looked at other women from time to time but never strayed. At the end of our particular Golden Age, one of our girls was at Brown and the other was teaching in a foreign exchange program. Just before things went wrong, my wife and I were planning to go and visit her. I had an accident at a job site. That's what happened. I was in my pickup truck. The right side of my skull was crushed. My ribs were broken. My right hip was shattered. And although I retained sixty percent of the sight in my right eye (more, on a good day), I lost almost all of my right arm. I was supposed to lose my life, but I didn’t. Then I was supposed to become one of the Vegetable Simpsons, a Coma Homer, but that didn't happen, either. I was one confused American when I came around, but the worst of that passed. By the time it did, my wife had passed, too. She's remarried to a fellow who owns bowling alleys. My older daughter likes him. My younger daughter thinks he’s a yank-off. My wife says she’ll come around. Maybe sí, maybe no. That's what Kamen says. When I say I was confused, I mean that at first I didn’t know who people were, or what had happened, or why I was in such awful pain. I can't remember the quality and pitch of that pain now. I know it was excruciating, but it's all pretty academic. Like a picture of a mountain in National Geographic magazine. It wasn’t academic at the time. At the time it was more like climbing a mountain. Continue Reading "Memory" | | | Duma Key
 How to Draw a Picture
Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember. How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I’ve come to believe. Imagine a little girl, hardly more than a baby. She fell from a carriage almost ninety years ago, struck her head on a stone, and forgot everything. Not just her name; everything! And then one day she recalled just enough to pick up a pencil and make that first hesitant mark across the white. A horizon-line, sure. But also a slot for blackness to pour through. Still, imagine that small hand lifting the pencil... hesitating... and then marking the white. Imagine the courage of that first effort to re-establish the world by picturing it. I will always love that little girl, in spite of all she has cost me. I must. I have no choice. Pictures are magic, as you know. My Other Life
My name is Edgar Freemantle. I used to be a big deal in the building and contracting business. This was in Minnesota, in my other life. I learned that my-other-life thing from Wireman. I want to tell you about Wireman, but first let's get through the Minnesota part. Gotta say it: I was a genuine American-boy success there. Worked my way up in the company where I started, and when I couldn’t work my way any higher there, I went out and started my own. The boss of the company I left laughed at me, said I'd be broke in a year. I think that's what most bosses say when some hot young pocket-rocket goes off on his own. For me, everything worked out. When Minneapolis–St. Paul boomed, The Freemantle Company boomed. When things tightened up, I never tried to play big. But I did play my hunches, and most played out well. By the time I was fifty, Pam and I were worth forty million dollars. And we were still tight. We had two girls, and at the end of our particular Golden Age, Ilse was at Brown and Melinda was teaching in France, as part of a foreign exchange program. At the time things went wrong, my wife and I were planning to go and visit her. Continue Reading Duma Key | | |
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 A Horribly Good Novel, 2009-01-05
"Why not?" I asked myself. "Why not end the year with a book by Stephen King?" Believe it or not, I've never read a single book by the King of Horror Fiction (I wonder what Stephen King thinks of that title), although I've seen at least two Stephen King movies, The Shining and The Shawshank Redemption. Horror fiction is not my usual reading choice--not by a long shot--but we'd been given the thick paperback Duma Key as a Christmas gift and I picked it up, read a few pages, and decided to continue. I could always stop reading it if I didn't care to finish it, as I do with other books which fail to engage me. But it did engage me--and quickly. Stephen King is a good storyteller, a master. His friendly, familiar style drew me in; his tone seems to balance the menacing events, liberal use of profanity, and gore of his books. He's also quite funny--Edgar, the protagonist of Duma Key, who's lost an arm in a horrific accident, makes jokes about his missing arm such as, "I was going to say I'd cut my own arm off first, but all at once that seemed like a really bad idea."
Quite briefly, here's the basic storyline of Duma Key, a bestselling horror novel published in 2008. Edgar Freemantle, a wealthy, 57-year-old contractor, suffers a traumatic brain injury and loses his right arm in a horrendous accident at a job site. Edgar also battle bouts of rage and forgetfulness during his recovery, and to make matters worse, his wife wants a divorce. Depressed and suicidal, Edgar follows the advice of Dr. Kamen, his therapist, to "change his scenery", and moves from Minnesota to Duma Key, a small, nearly deserted island off Florida's gulf coast. Edgar rents Salmon Point--which he calls "Big Pink" due to its pink color--a unique house on the northern part of the island, where Edgar feels compelled to draw and paint, a compulsion he relates to the phantom limb sensation he has in his right arm. His paintings, which are quite good, have a sinister side to them, and seem to foretell horrific future events. They are also somehow connected to the past, and to Elizabeth Eastlake, an elderly resident of Duma Key.
Extremely imaginative and prolific, Stephen Edwin King wrote over 40 books, including a 7-part series of novels, a 6-part serial novel, and countless short stories, and is one of the world's most popular writers. Would I read another book by Stephen King? Yes. While I can't say that I'll join a Stephen King fan club, I am interested in reading Lisey's Story, which King has called his best book. I'm particularly interested in what writers deem as their best work.
(This review is from my blog about books, Suko's Notebook.)
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Very Boring, even for troops., 2009-01-03
I could not finish this book. Very boring and tedious. King is not what he used to be, a writer who could hold your interest. And as far as his comments earlier this year at the Library Of Congress about our men and women in uniform and their being illiterate, I wonder if he ever issued an apology. (Donating unmarketable books to take advantage of a tax write-off would not constitute an apology). I am certain that many armed services members are better educated than King. And the armed forces does have minimum physical and educational standards you have to meet in order to join. In other words Mr. King, our troops can read. Just not your books any more, for many reasons.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Still King, 2009-01-02
While so many others have said it much better than I can, Duma Key was great. This is the best book King has written in years. I have also been a big fan of SK since Salem's Lot. And as another reviewer said, it was a close parallel to King's own recent experiences. As I got farther into the book, I realized it also paralleled several events in my recent past, although mine weren't on as quite grand a scale as Edgar's.
Highly recommended for fans of King, and anybody else looking for a story different from all the cookie-cutter stories out there.
I'd give it at least 8 stars if I could.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
The King is Back! Long live the king!, 2008-12-29
God it's great to see Steven King back in true form again! This is new story, new ideas. He's writing like he loves to write again...
The story is fantastic; the characters are honest and very likable. Some of the scary "creatures" seem (as other reviews have stated) juvenile - but we have to remember that those particular creatures are those imagined/created by the little girl... Anyway, it's not the creatures that are the scariest part. This story has a lot to say about life; and about how to find your own way to go on and really live again after a tragedy.
This is a well written, honest, engaging story. I'll not spoil the telling of the tale....
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 A Real Disappointment, 2008-12-29
I have not read a Stephen King book in years. In my 20s, I read many King books, and I loved them. I thought he had a great ability to make you care about the characters and to keep you on the edge of your seat. I always felt like his characters talked the way people really talked and acted the way people really acted.
None of those great qualities came through in this book. It was way too long. After 300 pages I was wishing the main characters would die already: unfortunately, I had 470 more pages to go! The "big scary" was not scary. It was really sort of silly. The "big scary" was not something you've ever heard of before, and it took a LOT of exposition by the characters to explain why they were afraid. The characters routinely said things that people in their particular situations would never say. It was just not good.
The penultimate scene was well-written and gruesome. It was good enough that I gave the book 2 stars, but the pay-off was not nearly enough to justify the 770 pages.
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