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Loading... Duma Keyby Stephen King
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  BobAvey | Oct 26, 2009 |  I've always hated it when people said "such and such book is so and so's best work ever!" That being said, I'm going to admit that DUMA KEY is, indeed, one of Stephen King's best books ever. Probably the best he's had in the last few years. The great thing about DUMA KEY is that it's not out-and-out horror that grabs you right away. It's an isidious type of evil that's at work in this story, and it's actually the very real character of Edgar Freemantle who makes it worth reading. The horror, which comes later, advances the plot very well, but watching Edward tumble, soar, and then crash through it all is what makes the book one that's hard to put down. If you like King, if you like stories of horror mixed with the supernatural, and if you want a book you'll read within a matter of days, then DUMA KEY is for you. It's that good! (  ) GeniusJen | Oct 13, 2009 | This had a completely different feel for a King novel but I really enjoyed it just the same. The story started off a bit slow, but there's a lot of background story required to make the second half all the more fulfilling. The creep factor is just as high as his other novels by the time you hit the middle of the book. It was really entertaining ( ) pmtracy | Sep 4, 2009 | I was more excited reading this book than I have been about Stephen King books in years. And I felt like the ending worked - in the past I've enjoyed several of the stories and then been annoyed by the endings because they just seemed to be out of proportion in weirdness to the rest of the story (if that makes any sense). This one felt like the whole thing was all of a piece - beginning to end. (  ) chrisubus | Aug 12, 2009 | worst attempt was to read The Stand, which I found to be too realistic... So I sat him aside for a while. I'm really glad I got back into him, and Duma Key was a great book to start with. I think this book was brilliant. King writes from Edgar Freemantle's point of view. We get to go through his rehabilitation with him. In the begining I had a hard time understanding what Edgar was trying to say, but as the book goes on and Edgar learns to speak again, and I got used to how he talked I didn't notice the speech problems. The story took me a VERY LONG time to read. I think I bought this one back in March and I just finished it, so just shy of 6 months. Part of this was because I was reading other books and part of it was because the beginning was kind of slow. But once I got about halfway through and was really connected to the story it only took me a few days to finish it. As the story got going, and I started to figure out what was going on, I couldn't stop reading it. I had a few sleepless nights with this one. As usual King's writing takes you on a trip along with the characters. I could see what was going on clear as day. There was very little that I couldn't picture. Even the weird stuff was described so well I could see exactly what King was describing. This was a great book, and I'm glad I stuck it out. 700 pages seemed pretty daunting, but there was so much that made the story that had it been cut to make the book shorter I know I wouldn't have liked this one. If you like Stephen King and haven't read this one go get it, it's well worth it. If you've never read King and think 700 pages is too much just take my word, you won't be disappointed. Just promise you'll read through at least halfway before you decide if you want to finish it or not. ( ) Justjenniferreading | Aug 6, 2009 | 
 Sometimes, you hardly know where to begin. And so it is with "Duma Key," latest in a gloriously long line of tales from the uber-popular Stephen King. There are bad accidents, and there are horrible accidents, and horror novelist Stephen King knows about the worst kind. Stephen King’s “Duma Key” ventures to an all-but-uninhabited Florida island where the shells groan at high tide, tennis balls appear unexpectedly, foliage grows ominously quickly, and at least one heron flies upside-down. Given this combination of author and setting, it’s inevitable that something terribly undead will show up before the book is over.  When Stephen King wrote Misery in 1987, making the hero a writer was an unusual departure for him. Recently, however, centring his novels on creative types has become a habit. In Cell, the protagonist is a comic-book artist. Lisey’s Story involves a dead author whose widow struggles to protect his legacy. And Duma Key’s narrator, Edgar Freemantle, is a painter whose work gives him paranormal powers – to know everything about people hundreds of miles away, to predict events, even to heal or kill someone. If you've read most of Stephen King's past works, you'll get a kick out of the opening line of "Duma Key," his new effort hitting bookstores this week. King signals to his Constant Readers, as he calls us, that whatever flaws his protagonist might have — and they are plentiful in this tale — he would wind up trying to do the right thing. Our hero's name is Edgar Freemantle, and it's no small accident he shares his surname with the savior-like figure in King's epic novel, "The Stand."
Amazon.com (ISBN 0743569741, Audio CD)Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: It would be impossible to convey the wonder and the horror of Stephen King's 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 King's 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 that's 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 that's just the first thirty pages... --Daphne Durham Duma Key: Where It All Began 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--you'll 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 can't really say. Can you? --Chuck Verrill "Memory" Maybe, but that doesn’t matter, either. That's 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. That's 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 didn't 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. She's 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. That's 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 can't remember the quality and pitch of that pain now. I know it was excruciating, but it's 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 Key How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've 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 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 my own. The boss of the company I left laughed at me, said I'd be broke in a year. I think that's what most bosses say when some hot young pocket-rocket goes off on his own. For me, everything worked out. When Minneapolis–St. Paul boomed, The Freemantle Company boomed. When things tightened up, I never tried to play big. But I did play my hunches, and most played out well. By the time I was fifty, Pam and I were worth forty million dollars. And we were still tight. We had two girls, and at the end of our particular Golden Age, Ilse was at Brown and Melinda was teaching in France, as part of a foreign exchange program. At the time things went wrong, my wife and I were planning to go and visit her. Continue Reading Duma Key
 The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born
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Memories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own. That's what Kamen says. I tell him I never chased the memory of my accident. Some things, I say, are better forgotten.
How to Draw a Picture
With the exception of the Colorado Kid, I have to confess to having not read Stephen King in awhile. I'd become disappointed in some of his efforts.
By chance, through the winning of a raffle, which awarded a bundle of books, I came into possession of a copy of Duma Key. Even then I did not read the book right away, choosing a few of the other books in the stack instead. When I did get around to it, I first examined the cover, realizing that I liked that much of it. I cracked the book open and began to read. A few hours later, I knew that I had once again become entranced by the work of Mr. King.
If you're a fan of Stephen King, especially one who has been away for a while, you should pick up a copy of Duma Key. Stephen is definitely back on track with this one.
-- Bob Avey, author of the Detective Elliot mystery series (