“God punishes us for what we can’t imagine,” says Jerome Wireman, an ex-lawyer who's taken up caring for an elderly octogenarian named Elizabeth Eastlake in Stephen King’s latest horrifying tale, Duma Key. Wireman is grossly understating the situation. Duma Key is the story of Edgar Freemantle, who due to a freak accident, goes from a construction mogul to losing much of his memory, arm, wife and ability to control his insane rages. One of those rages leads him to try to strangle his wife and she divorces him. But the God of Stephen King’s world is not a complete bastard. Edgar gains some miraculous abilities, which right there should raise the flags and jingle the warning bells. At the suggestion of his therapist, Edgar relocates to Duma Key, a nearly deserted Key on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Horror and mayhem ensue. Of course they do. It’s not giving anything away to say this – in any Stephen King novel, you know there’s going to be a spooky Big Bad, and most likely one with lots of ‘teef.’ The book is a wonderful read, and whether he’s writing more deeply or I am reading more deeply with age, Duma Key feels more personal and real than ever, which is endearing and chilling all at once.
As the reader follows Edgar through his very strenuous recovery, it is impossible to miss the parallels to Mr. King’s own life. There are twelve short discourses on the artistic process: “How to Draw a Picture,” that could easily translate to (Mr. King’s) the writing process while at the same time delivering Elizabeth’s back story. But the real beauty is that Duma Key, more than any of his other novels, seems to give a little sense of Mr. King sitting down in a small room with Constant Reader one dark night, a small fire flickering lazily in a hearth behind him, perhaps after a couple glasses of wine or a few beers, and saying very quietly, very seriously, “so this is what it was like.” Mr. King has always maintained a tight relationship with his readers and Duma Key seems to have added a level of intimacy to the relationship that will certainly move the occasional reader as well as the faithful.
Without getting too tangential, a friend of a friend commented that she felt Mr. Kings last few releases have become violent in a different way that she’s come to expect. Well, honestly, my first thought was, he’s a horror writer – how can you not expect violence? But I think I know what she means. There have been some elements in the last couple of books that have seemed a bit more random and grounded in reality than in past works. Yet this does not distress me in the least. While I tend to avoid news stories of freak accidents and child abductions, these things do happen. They are true. And Mr. King tells the truth, even if it is surrounded by the supernatural and fantastical. He also likes the underdog, so whereas in real life the victim rarely gets avenged in any visceral and satisfying way, Kings characters have been getting to whoop the bad guys’ butts and hand them back on splintery skewers. What’s not to appreciate about that? I say: Bravo!
I’ll admit, I am extremely biased about Mr. King. I’ve been a Constant Reader since the age of nine when Christine made me wary of big car grilles. But that notwithstanding, I can still recognize the stronger vs. weaker of his creations. Duma Key is, no doubt, up there among the best. The writing is engaging, tense, sweet and elegant – Stephen King fully in the zone. This one gets a wholehearted recommendation from me.
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