Review: Duma Key

I was about a quarter the way into Stephen King’s Duma Key; feeling a sense of growing dread and dark foreboding. The hairs on the back of my neck bristled and a chill fell upon the room and I swear I thought the lights dimmed for a second. The first thought that came into my head was - ‘some books are dangerous’ and trust me Duma Key is one such book.

Duma Key is related to much of his earlier work as he references nods and winks in the narrative and comes up with a very scary tale from the elements that usually make everyday life unremarkable. But in the hands of Stephen King, the crevices of everyday reality mask the dark shadows of Hell. King’s novel hints that perhaps in reality - there is only randomness. That life and death are purely the results of random and unrelated events. So perhaps there is no grand plan, no fate, no destiny, because hidden between the paragraphs of Duma Key - good and evil are just at opposite ends of the results of a hidden lottery game? Many of the characters in Duma Key find themselves holding winning lottery tickets, but as this is a novel by Stephen King – the prizes are not good, in fact when the balls all click into place, there will be no champagne, but there will be blood and consequences.

Enter Edgar Freemantle [an obvious nod to The Stand’s Abigail Freemantle], the wealthy owner of a Minneapolis based construction company that he built up from scratch with his bare hands.. In his forties he is victim to a terrible accident on one of his building sites.. A heavyweight crane crashes into his pick-up truck trapping Edgar inside the cab. The aftermath of the accident has Edgar losing an arm, having severe head injuries that reduce his mobility considerably and bestow him with terrible pain. The head injury coupled with the tremendous pain he endures during his recovery cause’s him to get his words mixed up, turn his temper into red rages and question the world he sees around him. His wife Pam tries to cope but in the end realises that post-accident Edgar is not the same man she married. When Edgar in one of his red-rages pulls a plastic knife on his wife, Pam retracts herself from her changed husband and starts divorce proceedings.

Edgar’s eldest daughter Melinda escapes to study in France, while his favourite and younger daughter Ilse [aka Illy] prays that he gets better and that he and Pam can get back together. His doctor and nurse give him a doll to vent his rages upon – Reba. He begins a regime of exercise and pain-killers to help him cope with his new situation both physical and emotional. All the while he finds that his missing arm itches terribly. These early sequences are realistically detailed and painful to read, as one feels that King was drawing upon his own memories following his own serious accident that occurred in June 1999.

The next hint of trouble occurs when Edgar is brought home to convalesce. He witnesses a neighbourhood child’s dog get hit by a car [ala Pet Semetary]. As the child is taken away screaming by a parent, Edgar intervenes to put the dying dog out of its misery by snapping its neck. This is no mean feat for a one-armed man, and after the dog is silenced Edgar realises his phantom limb may well have intervened.

With his life now a series of struggles and his daughters away studying at colleges far, far away and a wife seeking divorce – Edgar has to decide what he should do. At the suggestion of his doctor [who realises that Edgar’s only real hobby before his business-life sucked away his time - was drawing and painting]; he packs his bags and heads off to a sunny clime to paint and recuperate. He settles on Duma Key [taking Reba, his anger management doll] – which is an idyllic beach-front leading to an Island off the Florida coast. He rents an apartment on stilts that faces the ocean. After settling into his new abode, he listens to the sea wash over the sea-shells beneath him as well as taking up painting and watching the sunset and sunrise from his studio room.

He calls his new home ‘Big Pink’ and discovers that when the itching from his phantom arm gets too hard to bear, his painting alleviates the itch and pain. Like all things in the worlds’ King creates – there are consequences, terrible consequences that will follow. When Edgar paints, looking out over the seascape, he falls into a trance-like state and his work is surrealistic with sinister implications. When Edgar comes out of his fugues, he feels ravenous and eats anything he can. The paintings hold significance, for which Edgar does not initially understand, that is until his youngest daughter Illy comes to visit. Illy tells her father about her boyfriend Carson Jones, who is religious and is going on a tour with a band called The Hummingbirds. The Problem is that when Illy describes Jones, Edgar realises that one of his paintings features this young man – but not in a good way. When Illy gets sick after they explore the Island, Edgar starts to realise that there are things within Duma Key that might hold danger to him and his daughter so when Illy recovers, he sends her away. More paintings follow each becoming more and more surreal. The painting that worries him most he calls ‘Girl and a Ship’ which features an empty Mary Celeste type of Galleon on the tide at Duma Key, with a small-row boat riding the Galleon’s wake. There is a girl in the row-boat who could be Reba [his anger-management doll], or perhaps the figure is his daughter Ilse? In his studio which overlooks the water that surrounds Duma Key, he paints more and more versions of ‘Girl and a Ship’ and gets a better view of the girl who he realizes may well be his daughter and that perhaps these surreal paintings maybe a portent – and like that in King’s 1979 novel “The Dead Zone”, perhaps Edgar Freemantle’s gift is more of a curse. The paintings also have a power that can be good, and saves the life of a friend along the way, while another offers retribution in the case of a random child-killer.

As Edgar’s injuries starts to improve – he ventures along the beach, each day walking further and further until he finally reaches his nearest neighbor – The elderly owner of Duma Key – Elizabeth Eastlake and her guardian [Jerome] Wireman. A friendship develops between Wireman and Freemantle, and the book is peppered with insights into life from the enigmatic Wireman. Edgar is soon made aware that Eastlake is a patron of the arts and encourages painters to stay at Duma Key, and that Salvador Dali stayed at Big Pink and even painted a surreal sketch there. As the narrative progresses Wireman becomes impressed by Edgar’s surrealistic paintings and persuades him to visit a local gallery as he is convinced as to the worth of the surreal canvases that Edgar has been producing.

Did Edgar chose to come to Duma Key or did Duma Key chose Edgar? That becomes a question that Edgar Freemantle debates. The growing friendship between Freemantle and Wireman reminded me of the gentle relationship between Andy Dufresne and Red – the main protagonists in King’s novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” [from the 1982 collection Different Seasons]. There is an air of mystery about Wireman, which I will not spoil but is related to ‘The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet’ a 1984 novella King wrote, that was re-published in 1985 in his collection “Skeleton Crew” and the idea resurfaced in “Revelations of Becka Paulson” [1997 Outer Limits Episode adapted from King’s short story] as well as in The Tommyknockers [1987].

So as the friendship grows between Edgar Freemantle and Jerome Wireman, the secrets of Duma Key slowly become revealed which link Edgar’s surrealistic paintings to that of the elderly property owner - Elizabeth Eastlake and her family secrets. There are subtle nods also to the work of H.P. Lovecraft as the danger that lurks in Edgar’s canvases may well link to an ancient evil; as King was a reader of Lovecraftian fiction in his youth as he detailed in his first non-fiction work “Danse Macabre” [1981].

Duma Key is a slow and intense story which unravels like opening a well-wrapped birthday present. There is a lot more that happens during Edgar’s journey, but to detail it will ruin the surprises for the reader unwrapping King’s present. Needless to say there will be terrible consequences for all, especially Edgar whose talent is also a curse as well as a gift. Duma Key is a terrifying book about friendship, and the random events that make life what it is, and that perhaps sometimes we can hear the balls in the lottery machine ahead of time, but the ability to do so comes with consequences and perhaps is linked to a greater evil; things we don’t understand. To confront them maybe the only way we can escape the consequences that occur when those balls all line up in the cosmic lottery that we call existence. Perhaps also the arts in their various guises, be they surreal paintings, be they written novels hide secrets about life and like Duma Key itself – perhaps they are dangerous. Highly recommended for those who like existential insights and chills with their literature, but remember this is a novel by Stephen King, so there will be consequences. You won’t find the Florida tourist board using Duma Key in their promotional brochures, but you will see this novel in bookstores coast-to-coast; and next time you view a surreal painting – think about where the image came from, because there are often consequences.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Ali Karim - RAM

Book Review: Duma Key