Duma Key

Categories: Horror & Supernatural , Fiction

I love the ocean more than most people love the ocean. I am happiest on a little sandy island, surrounded by the ocean as far as the eye can see.

Somehow, in Duma Key Stephen King brought alive all the magic of being on an island in the ocean. Granted, Duma Key is creepy, and some of the ordeals of the main characters' lives are difficult at best to read about, but the underlying presence of the ocean permeates the book.

Edgar Freemantle discovers that he has the gift of art; he is terribly injured in an accident, and when he goes to Duma Key to rest and recuperate in beautiful seclusion, he suddenly starts producing amazing artwork. He develops close friends on the island, but the inevitable course their lives follow is sinister and threatening. I will not give away the terrible secret of Duma Key; I will only say that it is not what you expect it to be.

Just listen to the surf. Listen to the shells. They are warning you...

Maybe it's because my dad was a painter and my sister is an artist that this book affected me so strongly. I think it is also because of Stephen King's prose. Some of the passages are so lovely that I wrote them down:

"...when memory takes its strongest hold, our own bodies become ghosts, haunting us with the gestures of our younger selves."

Little did I realize, when I was so stricken by this phrase, that it was the underlying theme of the whole book! Before that, Edgar describes the ocean view from his house:

"It was a vast blue expanse, flat as a plate on that hot November afternoon, and even with the sliding glass window-wall shut, I could hear its mild and steady sighing. I thought, It has no memory....I wanted to listen to the Gulf, sweet-talking me with words it wouldn't remember a minute later."

Oh, take me back to the ocean...as long as it's not on Duma Key!