Book Review: ‘Duma Key’ by Stephen King

“My father was a skindiver”

Stephen King has always been the master of horror, yet Duma Key seems to be one of his more overlooked novels. Here’s why you should add it to your reading list.

The story centres around a man called Edgar Freemantle. Once a successful contractor, he loses his arm, part of his sight and a lot of his mental capacity in a freak accident at work. After losing his job and then his wife – the latter for reasons he can’t quite remember – he finds himself frustrated, bored and evermore drawn to Duma Key and the house that waits by the gulf.

It’s there he first picks up a paintbrush.

“Start with a blank surface”

Some of Stephen King’s best works deal with recovery. Whether it’s Jack Torrance from the Shining grappling with his alcoholism and inner demons, or Rosie Daniels from Rose Madder trying to piece together her life after years of abuse; this is where King’s writing shines.

Once easy-going and competent, Edgar Freemantle now has trouble finishing his sentences and remembering the most basic of words. It doesn’t disrupt his internal monologue, a good thing in a novel written in first-person, but that only emphasises how trapped he feels by his new, malfunctioning body. Is it any wonder he develops anger problems and the red rage descends when he can’t think of a single name? You can’t read a scene with him desperately trying to offer a chair but unable to say the word without it catching your empathy. It’s this empathy that’ll take you with him to Duma Key, where he tries to recover in a slow, painful process, and it’s this empathy that’ll make your skin crawl when you realise what he’s up against. Like in all Stephen King novels, there’s more than one thing lurking in the dark, and it has no problem with going after someone already wounded. Duma Key has history, and whether its a picnic basket in the attic or the increasingly strange things appearing in his paintings, piece by piece the mystery unravels.  

But Edgar can’t run, and he’s not the only one in danger.

“I win, you win”

A common problem with the horror genre is characterisation. We spend so little time with the characters – barely learning their names and stereotypes: the funny guy, the jock, the final girl – and then the monsters are let out and the rest is just screaming.

Stephen King has never had this problem. The horrors creep in along with the characters’ backstories; neither slows the other but instead intwine together for the full impact. We lose characters we care about. Each monster or menace is tailored for the character they come after, forcing them to face the worst in themselves before the end. Was Jack Torrance’s downfall a haunted hotel, or finally getting a drink? And what did Edgar Freemantle do, when he was in one of his rages? Duma Key tells us. It makes us like and appreciate each character; Edgar, Wireman, Ilse, which makes their pain and fear all the more compelling when the novel reaches its climax and Edgar has to face his pain, rage, love for his daughters, and the thing waiting in Duma Key.

Part ghost story and part something else, Duma Key is an atmospheric addition to Stephen King’s collection.

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Article by Rebecca White.