Stephen King review/rant #2

So, on the item on my Stephen King plate right now is a book called Duma Key. I didn't really have any particular expectations when I started reading, I mean I expected it to be up to King quality standards, but I wasn't even really sure what the book was about. In a nutshell, the book is about Edgar, a man who loses and arm, a marriage and almost his life in a construction accident. He moves to a remote Key off the Florida coast and begins drawing and painting. As his skills progress, he is able to paint sort of telepathically using some phantom limb connections. That is a really rough sketch of what is going on in the book and I am speaking being only 347 pages into the 611 page novel. The style is really good. Edgar dealt with some memory loss and messed up head stuff after his accident. King expresses this really well in the way he writes and when the story is told from Edgar's point of view. A lot of the King that I have read has made me feel uneasy at points, especially Pet Sematary, but even though that was a book that I had to stop reading before bed, it never really kept me from sleeping.

Last night, Duma Key scared me to the the point that I could not get to sleep. The thing that scared me was not necessarily something that came out of the novel and scared me, but was, I guess, the shared fear that Edgar was experiencing. He sees the ghosts of two little girls and they slowly climb the stairs toward him. He is so frightened that he faints and when he finally comes back to consciousness he is scared to open his eyes once he goes to bed, thinking they will be standing on either side of his bed if he looks. I went to bed and closed my eyes the second the light was off and didn't open them again. Even then, it was like I could feel the girls standing there beside the bed. With my eyes closed, it still took me 20 or 30 minutes to fall asleep. Honestly, I am still feeling uneasy writing about this and thinking about it right now.

Moments like these are what make King's work so impressive to me. I am a horror veteran, I have seen hundreds or horror movies and read a lot of horror fiction. I like to think that it takes a lot to really scare me, to stick with me outside of the movie or the book. King is really the only creator of horror who can do this to me consistently. All the book gave was a few vague descriptions and the fact that Edgar was genuinely terrified that the girls would be there and I couldn't sleep. If you're looking for this feeling or something like it, I can tell you that Pet Sematary, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Shining, Bag of Bones and Duma Key have all done this for me so you may want to check them out.

I'm sure I will have more to say as I finish the book over the next few days and look forward to starting the next King novel. As always, suggestions are welcome.