Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: It would be impossible to convey the wonder and the horror of Stephen Kings 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 Kings 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 thats 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 thats 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. Im 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 Liseys Story is a story about marriage? he said. Sure, I answered. The novel hadnt 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–youll 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 cant really say. Can you?
–Chuck Verrill
MemoryMemories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own. Thats 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. Thats 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. Thats 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 didnt 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. Shes 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. Thats 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 cant remember the quality and pitch of that pain now. I know it was excruciating, but its 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 KeyHow to Draw a PictureStart with a blank surface. It doesnt 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 cant remember.
How do we remember to remember? Thats a question Ive 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 lets 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
Great Read
In the first handful of chapters of Duma Key, the reader gets an eerie suspicion that King is writing from personal experience. From Edgars accident itself to the after-effects of the trauma, the details are breathtakingly clear. As someone who has worked with Traumatic Brain Injury patients in the past, I became mesmerized in the way King described Edgars loss of words and the resulting substitutions and frustration–sit in the char, the chum, sit in the god damn friend. As a reader, you are immediately sucked into Edgars plight.
Kings excellence at his craft shines through as well in the conversational way Edgar relates the whole tale to you like he is chatting with a friend (you) over coffee. Having listened to Stephen King read his book On Writing, the pace, the language, and the images in Duma Key are very similar to the way King relates his own lifes story at the beginning of On Writing. One of the noticeable differences in Duma Key, compared to other King titles, is the use of repetition. The reader realizes less than half-way through the lengthy novel, that when a phrase or detail is repeated it is important. A second noticeable difference is that Stephen King creates some truly beautiful prose, rather than the frightening, suspenseful scenes that he is renown for. Scenes between the Freemantles (Edgar, wife Pam, and daughters Ilsa and Melinda) are heartfelt and tender at times, but also show the pain and rage that can impale families dealing with a trauma.
The ensemble of supporting characters are rich, intriguing, and provide a backdrop for Edgars development. Jerome Wireman, the resident lawyer turned caretaker, provides Edgar with not only a companion, but also a philosophical guide through Edgars new life. He is a good friend with a tale of his own to spin. Kings ability to characterize Wireman is a true mark of his greatness as a writer. Elizabeth Eastlake, the Floridian Godfathers Daughter, is not only Edgars landlord, but she is also the main character in Kings secondary plot. This King trademark of braiding two plots together has culminated in an amazing, rather than frightening story. As Elizabeths fog deepens, she remembers fragments from her past that urge Edgar forward to discover what is so special about Duma Key.
This Stephen King novel is by far his best in years. It contains hints, at times not so subtle ones, of the supernatural, but supernatural horror is not the primary focus of this story. Its focus is clearly the humanity of the characters. The themes resounding in Edgars, Wiremans, and Elizabeths experiences exclaim redemption, second-chances, and recovery.
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Duma Key: A Novel by Stephen King
