Duma Key
Encyclopedia
Duma Key is a horror novel by American novelist Stephen King
published in 2008. The book reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It is King's first novel to be set in Florida
or Minnesota
.
s and thoughts of suicide
.
On the advice of his psychologist, Dr. Kamen, Edgar takes "a geographical"- a year long vacation meant for rest and further recovery. He decides to rent a beach house
on Duma Key, a (fictional) island off the west coast of Florida
, after reading about it in a travel brochure. The beach house he is renting turns out to be a place named Salmon Point, though Edgar nicknames it "Big Pink," because of its rich pink
color. Also on the advice of Dr. Kamen, Edgar revives his old hobby of sketching after he settles in Big Pink. He settles into the house with the help of Jack Cantori, a local college student.
As Edgar becomes increasingly involved in his art, painting quickly becomes an obsession, with Edgar working with a furious energy and in a daze. Edgar's missing right arm begins to itch in a phantom limb sensation and it forces him to bring up psychic images in his paintings; he learns that his younger daughter, Ilse, is engaged to a choir singer and that his ex-wife Pam is having an affair with his former accountant, Tom Riley, by painting the aforementioned situations. Soon after this, Ilse comes to visit him. During this trip he paints The End of the Game, which he gives to her. While exploring the island they drive past an extraordinarily old looking woman, Elizabeth Eastlake, and Ilse later becomes violently ill as they drive into the overgrown part of the island. Elizabeth later calls Edgar, warning him that Duma Key "has never been a lucky place for daughters". Edgar initially disregards the message, since Eastlake has Alzheimer's disease
.
Edgar slowly recuperates helped in part by taking longer and longer walks along the beach. He slowly approaches and eventually meets and befriends a man in his late 40's whom Freemantle had seen sitting under an umbrella off in the distance. This character, Jerome Wireman, to whom Edgar becomes quite close, is a hired companion for Eastlake. Edgar learns that Miss Eastlake is very wealthy and owns the entire island.
The way Edgar paints becomes systematic: he gets a phantom-limb sensation and he paints a psychic image. He eventually compiles a large catalog of artwork and is convinced by his friends to try to sell it to an art gallery; he does and the gallery plans to exhibit his work. While the exhibition is being planned, Edgar gradually begins to understand that his paintings have a paranormal power that allow him to manipulate events, places and people. But nobody outside of Edgar's close family and friends will ever know this. It is evidenced when one of his paintings removes a bullet that was lodged in Wireman's brain from a previous suicide attempt, and another causes Candy Brown, a man accused of raping and murdering a young girl in a highly publicized case, to die suddenly in his prison cell. Elizabeth advises Edgar that due to the power they possess his paintings should be removed from the Island after the exhibition.
Elizabeth makes a surprise appearance at the exhibition, and after seeing the paintings herself for the first time becomes distressed and tells Edgar a number of things, including that the "table is leaking". Elizabeth suffers a violent seizure as she is trying to tell Edgar this and dies in the hospital soon after. Edgar suspects that the entity, Perse, silenced Elizabeth. When Edgar returns to Duma the next day he discovers that Big Pink was broken into and finds a canvas with "Where our sister?" sprawled on it, left in the house along with the footprints of an adult and two children. He soon discovers that those in possession of his paintings either die, or become possessed by "Perse" and carry out her deeds, which mainly include killing people close to Edgar. Most notably, Mary Ire, who had purchased one of a series of "Girl and Ship" paintings, breaks into Ilse's apartment and kills her by drowning her in her bathtub (just minutes after Ilse burns "The End of The Game" at Edgar's request). Mary Ire commits suicide almost instantly thereafter.
Edgar begins to realize that his paintings are connected to tragic events in Miss Eastlake's childhood. Edgar discovers, through both his paintings and the drawings done by a young Elizabeth after she had suffered a head injury and began drawing herself, that Elizabeth had inadvertently used her paintings to discover a figurine off of the coast of Duma Key. This figurine, of a red-cowled woman, used the young Elizabeth to begin changing the reality around her. Elizabeth tried to use her power to destroy the figurine by drawing it and then erasing it. This only enraged the entity Persephone
, which then killed Elizabeth's twin sisters by leading them into the surf and drowning them. A young Elizabeth, with the help of her Nanny, eventually discovered that the entity could be neutralized by drowning her in freshwater, and Elizabeth was able to do this by placing the figurine in a cask that is sealed in a cistern under the original house on Duma Key.
Intent on putting a stop to Perse following the death of his beloved daughter, Edgar, along with Wireman and Jack, travels to the house Elizabeth lived in as a child, which is now overgrown by thick, unnatural vegetation. They manage to find the figurine, and are able to contain it in freshwater inside one of their flashlights. Later, Edgar takes the flashlight back to Big Pink, where his daughter Ilse begins to form out of the sand and seashells under the house. The entity offers Edgar immortality and forgetfulness in exchange for the flashlight. Edgar, however, has a different flashlight and tricks the entity masquerading as his daughter to get close enough to him that he can destroy it. Later, Edgar drops the figurine into one of the freshwater lakes of Minnesota.
The book ends with Edgar starting his final painting; a storm destroying Duma Key.
Although moving slowly at first, he rapidly increases in talent and figures out how to replicate the surrealism of his first drawing by adding objects hovering in the background of the sunsets, beginning with his Sunset with Conch.
and declared by King in that article as a byproduct of the fact that "[...]a lot of today's reviewers grew up reading my fiction. Most of the old critics who panned anything I wrote are either dead or retired".http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-01-23-stephen-king_N.htm Most critics noted the personal quality of what King was writing about, having suffered a similarly horrific and sudden accident.
The New York Times printed a fairly positive review by Janet Maslin which called the novel "frank and well grounded" and lauded the brevity and imagery of the novel, as well as the furious pace of the last third,http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/books/21maslin.html, while a somewhat less enthusiastic but still positive review by Mark Rahner was published by the Seattle Times that while criticizing King for a little unoriginality and long-windedness, ultimately praises King's characters and the terror of the novel.http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2004137528_king22.html
Richard Rayner, in a review published by the Los Angeles Times
called the novel a "beautiful, scary idea" and lauds it for its gritty down to earth characters. However while also praising the writing itself, "He, (King), writes as always with energy and drive and a wit and grace for which critics often fail to give him credit", criticizes it for losing its originality and believability towards the conclusion, stating "The creepy and largely interior terror of the first two-thirds of the story dissipates somewhat when demon sailors come clanking out of the ocean."http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/21/entertainment/et-book21s=g&n=n&m=Broad&rd=www.google.com&tnid=1&sessid=62307d61677d055c06c47985d51fa753dfc41934&pg=0&pgtp=article&eagi=&page_type=article&exci=2008_01_21_entertainment_et-book21 Similarly, the Boston Globe review, writing by Erica Noonan, called the novel a "welcome return" to a similar style of some King's better novels.http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/01/19/king_finds_fright_on_floridas_coast/
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
published in 2008. The book reached #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. It is King's first novel to be set in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
or Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
.
Plot
The story begins shortly after a Minneapolis construction company owner named Edgar Freemantle barely survives a horrific on-site accident where his truck was crushed by a crane. Though he survives, Freemantle's right arm is amputated, and severe injuries to his head cause Edgar to have problems with speech, vision, and memory. As a result Edgar also has violent mood swingMood swing
-Associated disorders:Mood swings are commonly associated with mood disorders including bipolar disorder and depression. In patients with cases of bipolar disorder, the patient experiences serious mood swings that last for days or even weeks...
s and thoughts of suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
.
On the advice of his psychologist, Dr. Kamen, Edgar takes "a geographical"- a year long vacation meant for rest and further recovery. He decides to rent a beach house
Beach house
A beach house is a house on or near a beach, generally used as a vacation or second home for people who commute to the house on weekends or during vacation periods....
on Duma Key, a (fictional) island off the west coast of Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, after reading about it in a travel brochure. The beach house he is renting turns out to be a place named Salmon Point, though Edgar nicknames it "Big Pink," because of its rich pink
Pink
Pink is a mixture of red and white. Commonly used for Valentine's Day and Easter, pink is sometimes referred to as "the color of love." The use of the word for the color known today as pink was first recorded in the late 17th century....
color. Also on the advice of Dr. Kamen, Edgar revives his old hobby of sketching after he settles in Big Pink. He settles into the house with the help of Jack Cantori, a local college student.
As Edgar becomes increasingly involved in his art, painting quickly becomes an obsession, with Edgar working with a furious energy and in a daze. Edgar's missing right arm begins to itch in a phantom limb sensation and it forces him to bring up psychic images in his paintings; he learns that his younger daughter, Ilse, is engaged to a choir singer and that his ex-wife Pam is having an affair with his former accountant, Tom Riley, by painting the aforementioned situations. Soon after this, Ilse comes to visit him. During this trip he paints The End of the Game, which he gives to her. While exploring the island they drive past an extraordinarily old looking woman, Elizabeth Eastlake, and Ilse later becomes violently ill as they drive into the overgrown part of the island. Elizabeth later calls Edgar, warning him that Duma Key "has never been a lucky place for daughters". Edgar initially disregards the message, since Eastlake has Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease
Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...
.
Edgar slowly recuperates helped in part by taking longer and longer walks along the beach. He slowly approaches and eventually meets and befriends a man in his late 40's whom Freemantle had seen sitting under an umbrella off in the distance. This character, Jerome Wireman, to whom Edgar becomes quite close, is a hired companion for Eastlake. Edgar learns that Miss Eastlake is very wealthy and owns the entire island.
The way Edgar paints becomes systematic: he gets a phantom-limb sensation and he paints a psychic image. He eventually compiles a large catalog of artwork and is convinced by his friends to try to sell it to an art gallery; he does and the gallery plans to exhibit his work. While the exhibition is being planned, Edgar gradually begins to understand that his paintings have a paranormal power that allow him to manipulate events, places and people. But nobody outside of Edgar's close family and friends will ever know this. It is evidenced when one of his paintings removes a bullet that was lodged in Wireman's brain from a previous suicide attempt, and another causes Candy Brown, a man accused of raping and murdering a young girl in a highly publicized case, to die suddenly in his prison cell. Elizabeth advises Edgar that due to the power they possess his paintings should be removed from the Island after the exhibition.
Elizabeth makes a surprise appearance at the exhibition, and after seeing the paintings herself for the first time becomes distressed and tells Edgar a number of things, including that the "table is leaking". Elizabeth suffers a violent seizure as she is trying to tell Edgar this and dies in the hospital soon after. Edgar suspects that the entity, Perse, silenced Elizabeth. When Edgar returns to Duma the next day he discovers that Big Pink was broken into and finds a canvas with "Where our sister?" sprawled on it, left in the house along with the footprints of an adult and two children. He soon discovers that those in possession of his paintings either die, or become possessed by "Perse" and carry out her deeds, which mainly include killing people close to Edgar. Most notably, Mary Ire, who had purchased one of a series of "Girl and Ship" paintings, breaks into Ilse's apartment and kills her by drowning her in her bathtub (just minutes after Ilse burns "The End of The Game" at Edgar's request). Mary Ire commits suicide almost instantly thereafter.
Edgar begins to realize that his paintings are connected to tragic events in Miss Eastlake's childhood. Edgar discovers, through both his paintings and the drawings done by a young Elizabeth after she had suffered a head injury and began drawing herself, that Elizabeth had inadvertently used her paintings to discover a figurine off of the coast of Duma Key. This figurine, of a red-cowled woman, used the young Elizabeth to begin changing the reality around her. Elizabeth tried to use her power to destroy the figurine by drawing it and then erasing it. This only enraged the entity Persephone
Persephone
In Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....
, which then killed Elizabeth's twin sisters by leading them into the surf and drowning them. A young Elizabeth, with the help of her Nanny, eventually discovered that the entity could be neutralized by drowning her in freshwater, and Elizabeth was able to do this by placing the figurine in a cask that is sealed in a cistern under the original house on Duma Key.
Intent on putting a stop to Perse following the death of his beloved daughter, Edgar, along with Wireman and Jack, travels to the house Elizabeth lived in as a child, which is now overgrown by thick, unnatural vegetation. They manage to find the figurine, and are able to contain it in freshwater inside one of their flashlights. Later, Edgar takes the flashlight back to Big Pink, where his daughter Ilse begins to form out of the sand and seashells under the house. The entity offers Edgar immortality and forgetfulness in exchange for the flashlight. Edgar, however, has a different flashlight and tricks the entity masquerading as his daughter to get close enough to him that he can destroy it. Later, Edgar drops the figurine into one of the freshwater lakes of Minnesota.
The book ends with Edgar starting his final painting; a storm destroying Duma Key.
Paintings
A number of Edgar's paintings play significant roles in the novel and are described in great detail, both in their creation and how they look, beginning with his very first extensive drawing upon arrival at Big Pink, a ghostly picture of a ship on the sunset titled Hello. He quickly experiments with a number of sunsets, which all fail to match up to "Hello".Although moving slowly at first, he rapidly increases in talent and figures out how to replicate the surrealism of his first drawing by adding objects hovering in the background of the sunsets, beginning with his Sunset with Conch.
Characters
The novel contains an expansive cast of minor characters while maintaining a rather small circle of central players.Major characters
- Edgar Freemantle: is the central character in the book, which focuses on his struggles and he eventually takes the lead in the climatic fight against Perse.
- Jerome Wireman: is a former lawyer from Omaha who moved down to Florida after losing his wife and daughter, surviving a suicide attempt, and being fired from his law firm.
- Elizabeth Eastlake: a wealthy heiress and former art patron suffering from Alzheimers, she plays a major role in background of the story and in leading the protagonists to stopping the evil force present on the island.
- Pam Freemantle: Edgar's wife who divorces him at the beginning of the novel. During the novel she has several affairs, but gradually reconciles with him until the events of the climax begin.
- Ilse Freemantle: Edgar's younger daughter who remains the only person from his "past life" to stay close to him and who is the person he loves most in the world.
- Jack Cantori: local college student who serves as Edgar's chauffer and handyman, keeping the house stocked with groceries and picking up whatever odds and ends he needs. It is his quick thinking that allows them to trap Perse at the end of the novel.
- Perse: the evil force manifested on Duma Key, she first reached out through young Elizabeth Eastlake to get back to the surface from the ocean before being trapped in freshwater (she is left powerless by it), until the present day. She commands a ship of damned souls, and while not human is said to have something distinctly feminine about her, and she is manifest in an old china doll with a red cloak. She is again put back to sleep at the end of the novel though the characters fear she will eventually escape again. Her full name, PersephonePersephoneIn Greek mythology, Persephone , also called Kore , is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld; she was abducted by Hades, the god-king of the underworld....
and her description and place are all generally influenced and taken from the Greek Goddess Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld (although, like many of King's entities, she is also decidedly LovecraftianH. P. LovecraftHoward Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....
).
Minor characters
There are a large number of minor characters in the book who have only passing significance to the main characters or to the plot of the book, including large numbers of friends and family from Edgar's "other life" as well as Wireman's family and boss, a number of characters with loose association to the two, and the various people who rent houses on Duma Key during the tourism season.Critical and popular reception
Critical reception was generally positive, with some negative criticism being outweighed on the whole by the positive, a fact noted by USA TodayUSA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
and declared by King in that article as a byproduct of the fact that "[...]a lot of today's reviewers grew up reading my fiction. Most of the old critics who panned anything I wrote are either dead or retired".http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-01-23-stephen-king_N.htm Most critics noted the personal quality of what King was writing about, having suffered a similarly horrific and sudden accident.
The New York Times printed a fairly positive review by Janet Maslin which called the novel "frank and well grounded" and lauded the brevity and imagery of the novel, as well as the furious pace of the last third,http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/books/21maslin.html, while a somewhat less enthusiastic but still positive review by Mark Rahner was published by the Seattle Times that while criticizing King for a little unoriginality and long-windedness, ultimately praises King's characters and the terror of the novel.http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2004137528_king22.html
Richard Rayner, in a review published by the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
called the novel a "beautiful, scary idea" and lauds it for its gritty down to earth characters. However while also praising the writing itself, "He, (King), writes as always with energy and drive and a wit and grace for which critics often fail to give him credit", criticizes it for losing its originality and believability towards the conclusion, stating "The creepy and largely interior terror of the first two-thirds of the story dissipates somewhat when demon sailors come clanking out of the ocean."http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/21/entertainment/et-book21s=g&n=n&m=Broad&rd=www.google.com&tnid=1&sessid=62307d61677d055c06c47985d51fa753dfc41934&pg=0&pgtp=article&eagi=&page_type=article&exci=2008_01_21_entertainment_et-book21 Similarly, the Boston Globe review, writing by Erica Noonan, called the novel a "welcome return" to a similar style of some King's better novels.http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2008/01/19/king_finds_fright_on_floridas_coast/
See also
- MemoryMemory (Stephen King)"Memory" is a short story by Stephen King that was originally published in the "summer reading" issue of Tin House magazine in July 2006. It is now confirmed to be similar to the first chapter of Duma Key...
, a related short story by King. King describes it as "the first chapter of Duma Key all kind of dressed up" in the Lilja's Library interview.