Books Duma Key: A Novel
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Rating: - Oh, well, finally!!!
After some deceptive pieces of work (Lisey's story, Cell...) SK gets back to real writing and makes the work done.

Duma Key is well built and innovative, with fresh ideas and, most importantly, the hypnotic way of involving the reader that only the best books of him do have.

I did appreciate very much the language, returned to usual heights of descriptive capability, and the very interesting excursion in the world of oniric painting and the consequences of a deep brain trauma on dormient capabilities.

Well done, original and entirely enjoiable. Just a step under masterpieces like "IT" and "The Langoliers", but a short step.

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Rating: - Couldn't stop reading
Stephen King once again proves himself a master with "Duma Key." Fantastic characterization and suspense; masterful exploration of the horrors lurking in seemingly benign places. I particularly enjoyed it because of its exporation of the creative process. Edgar's irresistable urge to paint is, no doubt, an echo of the way Stephen King feels about writing. The ending felt a little rushed. Other than that, great.

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Rating: - Compares Favorably with King's Early Work
I must confess that I was blown away by Duma Key. I used to be a huge fan of Stephen King's -- in the days of his classic works Carrie, The Shining, It, The Stand and Salem's Lot. I stopped reading King regularly after he published Pet Sematary which I found repulsive. However, King has restored my faith in his unique storytelling abilities with Duma Key. It is an epic introspective novel about Edgar Freemantle, a man crippled by a terrible accident, whose life (including his marriage) is destroyed by this tragedy. He returns to his love of art and finds creative brilliance after he relocates to Duma Key in Florida. What he doesn't realize is that his creative brilliance is inspired by an insidious, vengeful force older than time. Edgar's paintings take on a life of their own and the price for Freemantle's artistic brilliance may be the lives of everyone he holds dear. "Duma Key" is more than just a clever twist on "The Picture of Dorian Gray". It is King exploring the aftermath of his own terrible accident, when he was struck by a speeding van. King infuses Freemantle with a terrifying rage against fate, frustration, fear and strength to overcome the force seeking to destroy him. Edgar seems more real than almost any other character in King's canon. The book is intelligent, but it remains old-school horror complete with spirits and zombies. But Edgar is the novel's heart and you will be riveted. Be forewarned that this is over 1,000 pages, but definitely worth your time. Highly recommended.

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Rating: - A Story You'd Swear You'd Read Before
Stephen King's 2008 novel Duma Key is heavily evocative of his work from ten years earlier, Bag of Bones.

1. The protagonist is a man who amassed a fortune, then suffered a devastating loss
* Bestselling author loses his wife in 1988; successful building contractor loses his arm and much of his mental capacity in 2008 (and his marriage)
2. He flees his home base and takes up in an isolated house near water
* A lake in 1998; the Gulf of Mexico in 2008
3. He becomes increasingly convinced that the place "called" him.
4. Strange phenomena greet him upon arrival at the house
* The sound of a crying child and communication through refrigerator magnets in 1998; seashells that sound like they're talking when the waves hit in 2008
5. He "zones out" and wakes to find strange things have happened in the interim
* Automatic typing in 1998; automatic painting in 2008
6. He experiences a resurgence of creativity, but the creations are the medium for a message (writing in '98, painting in '08)
7. He is encouraged to continue his creative pursuits in order to enhance someone else financially (his publisher in '98; a gallery owner in '08)
8. In both cases, he is being told about something horrific that happened in the past, something that he is being called upon to do something about (a vengeful ghost in '98; an ancient sea-demon in '08)
9. Death by drowning figures prominently in both stories
10. A child or childlike adult leads him to a deep friendship
* Kyra and her mother Mattie in '98; Elizabeth and her caregiver Wireman in `08
11. The protagonist befriends a lawyer
* John Storrow in '98; Wireman in '08
12. The protagonist discovers a psychic link between himself and the child or childlike adult
* He and Kyra share a dream in '98; he and Elizabeth paint the same pictures, eight decades apart, in '08
13. The source of the evil is uncovered in a place not far from where he is staying, but in a place that has largely been abandoned (The Street in '98, the original family home in '08)
14. Someone has hidden a clue in a tin box under part of a house and the protagonist gradually figures out how to find it
* "Owls under studio" in '98; the "ha-ha" under the stairs in the old house
15. Non-human entities are used by the evil spirit to attack the protagonist (the tree in '98; the heron in '08)
16. The protagonist must get "down and dirty" to contain the rampaging spirit, and barely manages to succeed.
* Pouring lye into the grave in '98; the cistern in '08
17. The evil spirit kills the protagonist's loved one by someone else's hand
* His girlfriend in '98; his daughter in `08
18. The protagonist resolves to cease his creative pursuits after the crisis has passed.
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None of this changes the fact that Duma Key is a wordy, fascinating read from start to finish, whether or not you've already experienced Bag of Bones. It's wonderfully atmospheric, stirring your memories of sultry Florida vacations or John Huston film noir classics.

My major complaint with this novel is that it not only crams an enormous amount of events into the story, but also fails quite often to justify their inclusion. Bag of Bones neatly wrapped up virtually every possible loose end. Duma Key leaves many of them dangling. At least one major character dies with no foreshadowing, and others drop off the radar after having a significant amount of attention paid to them throughout the book. Duma Key is at least the length of the earlier novel, but the reader is left wishing King had tacked on an extra 10 or 20 pages.

King also forgoes the "social relevance" angle in Duma Key. While the denouement of Bag of Bones was a matter of racial hatred, the closest we get to that in Duma Key is a man accidentally killing his African-American employee and tossing her body down a well to escape the consequences ... but he does the same with his beloved daughter. There is a murdering pedophile caught on videotape, echoing a real-life news story that Stephen King no doubt got his fill of while wintering in the Sunshine State. But the hero's involvement in that story is, as King's character admits, a device of sorts, contrived by the demon to lure Freemantle into more and more other-worldly artistry, intended to snare more victims.

Both novels entertain us with a cynical "insider" look at the business side of the literature and art worlds.

The biggest objective distinction between these two novels is that in Duma Key, regardless of the eerie atmosphere, the protagonist is never truly alone. He is constantly on the phone to his ex-wife, therapist, daughters, and business associates. There's no love interest, but he has managed to find a platonic companion in an "anger doll" named Reba. He fights the villain with plenty of help from two "buddies." I found myself somehow missing the quiet, introspective solitude that Mike Noonan enjoyed in Bag of Bones. There, Noonan's dialogues, if not with ghosts, are largely with himself. His brother-in-law is his only real ally, and Frank Arlen plays a peripheral role at best. The lawyer is there to help, but for a fee ... and he threatens to become a romantic rival partway through the novel. In Duma Key, Ed Freemantle is surrounded by family and friends, reconciling briefly with his estranged wife (those two truly have a love-hate relationship), and never lacking for a sounding board.

Bag of Bones afflicts Mike Noonan and the reader with heartbreak - in Duma Key, the grief is displaced by rage and revenge.

If there is a point or a moral to Duma Key, it may be similar to that of Bag of Bones - that "things happen for a reason." The "reasons" touch Mike Noonan more personally than they do in Duma Key, where Ed Freemantle is not unlike the man taken in a "press gang" to fight someone else's battle until it becomes his own.