Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1264036 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 800 pages

Customer Reviews

His best book for ages!
Edgar Freemantle suffers extreme injuries including losing his right arm and severe head trauma, after his car collides with a crane. Because of this Edgar has violent outbursts resulting in his wife wanting a divorce. His doctor then recommends he moves to somewhere more remote where he can relax and begin to recover. This place is called Duma Key, an isolated key off the coast of Florida. Here Edgar finds his hidden talent - sketching followed by painting. He begins to paint magnificent landscapes of the view from his window at his home, The Big Pink, with some very supernatural outcomes. Also on Duma Key Edgar meets his new best friend Wireman, who seems to have supernatural visions too, as well as the owner of the key, Elizabeth Eastlake, also an artist with a mysterious past regarding the death of her twin sisters and the disappearance of her other sisters in the 1920's. Only Edgar is about to find out the truth through his own art.

Other than Blaze (which was written in the 70's) I haven't read any of the newer Stephen King books since Dreamcatcher but I have read pretty much everything he had written before then (not the Dark Towers series) and I can say that this is one of the best of his books I have ever read. Yes, it is big (nearly 600 pages in the hardback format) and did take me a while to finish but it was so worth it as this is one book (amongst a lot) that really proves that King is the master of story-telling.

Rather than going for full-on horror or supernatural fiction that King usually goes for, Duma Key concentrates more on the characters, who's feelings and emotions have been so well written that I felt that these were really people I knew and cared about by the time I got to the end of the book. At first when Edgar had first had his accident and became a frustrated, aggressive guy, I really didn't like him much (which I think is what King intended the reader to feel), but as the book when on I felt his pain and began to sympathise with him The relationships between the characters were also very believeable with Edgar and Wireman's feeling almost childlike and pure, in the usual King fashion.

The book isn't perfect, as at times it can feel like it is dragging a little (especially near the beginning) and Edgar's daughter Ilse comes across as a 5 year old most of the time although she is supposed to be 19, the ending is also a bit of a letdown, again dragged out a bit too long and has a bit of an anti-climax, but overall it is very well written and very much an unputdownable book that is one of the best I've read in a long time. Highly recommended.

just wonderful...
and I write as one who also thought King had lost his way (as did |Heinlein, as the years wore on). I hated Dreamcatcher, quite liked Cell.. but the end of the Dark Tower series really left me flat. Oh, and Lisey's Story wasn't terribly good. But Dura Key was wonderful... his style of writing which, if we are all honest, keeps us reading the stories which aren't so good... paid off again. I can't remember a book which last pulled me in so much and, for me, he has combined his storytelling ability (hard to surpass) with a bit of the old 'supernatural' King. In my view, his ability to tell a story has never diminished; but his later stories have been less than gripping in spite of that. Duma Key is just wonderful; his prose and lyrical storytelling is A1. I truly hope they never attempt to make a film of this book.

A Triumphant Return To Form
I've been a King fan since the mid 80s and there is no doubt that he has written some of the greatest stories in the past thirty years. However, in the past three or four years, his work has been less than memorable. Not badly written - just lacking that magic. If, like me, you've been keeping the faith these past few years, you will be glad to know that this latest novel is among the finest things he has ever written. King has a way with words that so few other writers do and the kind of imagination the world can never have enough of.

A stunning return.