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Duma Key: A Novel
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List Price: $28.00
Our Price: $18.48
Your Save: $ 9.52 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Manufacturer: Scribner
Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781416552512
ISBN: 1416552510
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 592
Publication Date: 2008-01-22
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
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Editorial Reviews:
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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 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. When his marriage suddenly ends, Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived his injuries. He wants out. His psychologist suggests a new life distant from the Twin Cities, along with 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 for Duma Key, an eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico calls out to him, and Edgar draws. Once he meets Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman with roots tangled deep in Duma Key, Edgar begins to paint, sometimes feverishly; 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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Horribly Good Novel
Comment: "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 divorces him. 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.)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Boring, even for troops.
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Still King
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The King is Back! Long live the king!
Comment: 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....
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Real Disappointment
Comment: 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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