After I read On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft I went back to my library and checked out The Time Traveler's Wife. I wanted a fantasy/science fiction book. It got good reviews on Barnes and Noble so I took the 500 plus page monster home with me. I won't go into too much detail as to why I returned it the very next day and got Duma Key, but I will say that reading a book that is written in the present tense is hard to get used to. Coupled with strange sentence structure and filler words I didn't get past chapter two. While I thought the book had a great theme, a person who floats in and out of time, was great, I just couldn't bear to read it.
On with Duma Key.
I took Duma Key home in part because it was Stephen King's latest novel and in part because it was sitting on the "New Arrivals" table. At just over 600 pages it was another monster I took home with me. I began to read that night and managed to get 140 pages in. I would have read more but my eyes were begging me to stop. I have always enjoyed Stephen King, although I have never read any of his horror books like Cujo or Carrie. I prefer his supernatural books such as The Stand or Dreamcatcher.
The inside jacket of the book gives a brief summary of the plot. Mine will be briefer still. Edgar Freemantle has a terrible accident that leaves him with no right arm and scrambes his memory. He moves to Duma Key on doctors orders and begins to paint; something he has never done before. Once the neighboring town discover his masterpieces and put them on display, things on Duma Key begin to unravel at an alarming pace.
King managed to take me on a wild ride filled with the twists and turns I have come to love and expect of his writing. Duma Key is mysterious. He delivers a novel to get lost in. From the very beginning, leading you into his world, all the way to the end. And never once, eluding to the circumstances in the end.
Worth the 600 plus pages you have to turn to discover the secrets of Duma Key.
1 comment:
I had to laugh at you returning The Time Traveler's Wife. I hadn't read a book written in the present tense yet, I'm curious to see how that would play on my mind. But Duma Key sound like a really deep book. I will have to check that one out. Six hundred pages is alot of reading, I uuslly limit myself to half that amount-- it's just a mental thing for me.
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