Duma Key Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Stephen King (Author), John Slattery (Narrator), Hodder Headline Limited (Publisher)

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Duma Key combines the appeal of Cell and Lisey's Story - two of Stephen King's most successful novels of all time - to take the legendary author to a whole new level. Read by John Slattery.

Duma Key is the engaging, fascinating story of a man who discovers an incredible talent for painting after a freak accident in which he loses an arm.

He moves to a "new life" in Duma Key, off Florida's West Coast - a deserted strip, part beach, part weed-tangled reef, owned by a patroness of the arts whose twin sisters went missing in the 1920s. Duma Key is where out-of-season hurricanes tear lives apart and a powerful undertow lures lost and tormented souls.

Here, Freemantle is inspired to paint the amazing sunsets. But soon the paintings become predictive, even dangerous. Freemantle knows the only way forward is to discover what happened to the twin sisters and uncover the secret of the strange old lady who holds the key.

The story is about friendship, about the bond between a father and his daughter, and about memory, truth and art. It is also is a metaphor for the life and inspiration of a writer, and an exploration of the nature, power, and influence of fiction.

Listening Length

21 hours
Author

Stephen King
Narrator

John Slattery
Audible release date

22 July 2008
Language

English
Publisher

Hodder Headline Limited
ASIN

B00NX7SD0G
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	21 hours
Author	Stephen King
Narrator	John Slattery
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	22 July 2008
Publisher	Hodder Headline Limited
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B00NX7SD0G
Best Sellers Rank	2,217 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 364 in Military Fantasy (Books) 384 in Fantasy (Audible Books & Originals) 1,421 in Teen & Young Adult (Books)

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Top reviews from Australia

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JAMES BROWN

Brilliant

Reviewed in Australia on 16 March 2016

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Even though it takes an imagination to understand the BOOGI - MANS The story is told by an expert KING

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Grum

Five Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 25 November 2014

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King at his best, couldn't put it down.

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Gary Granberg

Four Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 20 April 2015

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Interesting light read.

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Sergiu Pobereznic (author)

Some great thing and a few negatives (but I'm a fan)

Reviewed in Australia on 13 September 2015

There is only one problem with being Stephen King. You gain literary omnipotence and editors are unable to say "NO" to you. Everything is an instant hit. Duma Key has left me sitting on the fence and a touch cold.

But firstly, the story in brief: Edgar (a millionaire in construction) loses his right arm and memory in a terrible construction accident. He recovers with a kind of amnesia, soon becomes divorced and moves to DUMA KEY in Florida (as a geographical cure) a suggestion by his psychiatrist. While there he rediscovers his love of painting. But his paintings are more than just that. They hold something deeper and perhaps more sinister.

Not a bad premise, I thought.
The first 30 or so percent was typical Stephen King. Yes, it was compelling. Yes, it was nuanced. Yes, it was relatively complex. But... then there were so many long walks, meaningless chats, repetitive encounters and passages. So many in fact that at times I thought I was on the wrong page or had bumped my head.

And yet, I had the distinct feeling that I, the reader, was being set up for something very big. So, I read and read and read, attempting to imagine where the journey could or might end. And in the process the writing became forced and contrived just before the halfway mark. The middle being about 400 pages. That for me is a lot of time to invest in something that begins to sail slowly around and around destinations that are simply not that interesting.
Sometimes the boat (Mr King) pulling into a harbour where there is nothing of any appeal; the harbour being more of that character development, or another passage that I had already covered once, twice, three times, usually about the coral under the house.
It was also at around the halfway point that I realized, guessed, stumbled upon the twist or the secret within the work. So arriving at the finishing line was a little disappointing.

Having said that, Mr. King was still able to conjure the creepy moments that have made him the name he is. He described in great detail the pain of the protagonist, obviously based on his own experience. Many people believe that this novel reflects King’s state of mind when he himself was recovering from being struck by a car while he was out walking. He almost died in the accident.

King evokes unadulterated evil with ease even to this day. But the plot was dying a slow death because of this incessant character development, which he seemed to languish over for far too long ( a little like I am doing now). I just wished he would say what he meant and be done with it. The book became weaker and weaker as it languidly sailed along, seemingly without a breeze to help it reach land. It remained out in the middle of a still and uninteresting ocean. Actually, come to think of it, it was like being lost in a desert of words, with the odd mirage in the distance to wet my thirst for the vague gossamer plot.

On the plus side, the transient supporting cast fared much better. Some were really quite interesting even if only momentarily. However, there was one character that said the word "muchacho" (Spanish for, young man) about 10,000 times. I wanted to cut my wrists by the end. Why couldn't he die earlier in the novel? No wonder the word count for this novel is edging on a hefty 200,000 words. That's 3 regular novels in one behemoth package.

What is quite sad is that there were many interesting paragraphs, phrases that I could quote that would make people want to buy and read the book. Sadly the thousands of words in between them lets it down.
I even like the book's abstract title. DUMA KEY. I thought it was an actual key, but it's not. It's a place.

One thing that I will do is leave you with one passage that I enjoyed on the subject of: How to Draw a Picture (1).

"Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember.
How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I've come to believe.
Imagine a little girl, hardly more than a baby. She fell from a carriage almost ninety years ago, struck her head on a stone, and forgot everything. Not just her name; everything! And then one day she recalled just enough to pick up a pencil and make that first hesitant mark across the white. A horizon-line, sure. But also a slot for blackness to pour through.
Still, imagine that small hand lifting the pencil... hesitating... and then marking the white. Imagine the courage of that first effort to re-establish the world by picturing it. I will always love that little girl, in spite of all she has cost me. I must. I have no choice. Pictures are magic, as you know."

Absolutely brilliant! At least I think so.

Alright, one more on Art and Talent:
"Stay hungry. It worked for Michelangelo, it worked for Picasso, and it works for a hundred thousand artists who do it not for love (although that might play a part) but in order to put food on the table. If you want to translate the world, you need to use your appetites. Does this surprise you? It shouldn't. There’s no creation without talent, I give you that, but talent is cheap. Talent goes begging. Hunger is the piston of art."

Now you understand what I mean. All you have to do is wade through the rest to find these beautiful gems. A crying shame really. Some dexterous editing from his (hopefully) smart publisher and this book would have been a diamond. Instead, this book was rather like watching carbon working its way to becoming a diamond. Or something to that effect.

Finally... I had the feeling that the novel was weirdly, like a twisted, back-to-front, inside-out, upside-down, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" but without the ageing and dozens more paintings. But that may just be me though.
Sergiu Pobereznic (author

One person found this helpful

Helpful

John M. Ford

Scary Supernatural Events in a Down-to-Earth Setting

Reviewed in Australia on 30 September 2014

Edgar Freemantle, a Minnesota construction manager, is recovering from a crane accident that cost him his right arm. Also recovering from the disintegration of his marriage, Edgar rents a house on Florida's Duma Key. He divides his time between physical therapy and a renewed interest in sketching and painting. Edgar's art takes on an eerie quality as he creates haunting scenes he does not understand. And as he begins to paint with his missing right hand.

Edgar progresses along two paths. As planned, he gets on with his recovery. Edgar becomes physically stronger, proving his growing stamina with lengthening walks on the beach each day. He comes to terms with his estranged wife, two adult daughters, and former life in Minnesota. And Edgar makes friends, both on his little island and off. These are solid friendships with interesting people. Some, like Jerome Wireman from down the beach, have their own stories to tell. Others, like his handyman Jack Cantori, reveal little of themselves, but bring stability to Edgar's new life on the Key.

Like others who find themselves in a Stephen King story, Edgar also goes down a darker path. He draws on his terrifying supernatural experiences, his friends' knowledge of the Key's troubled history, and his emerging understanding of his own otherworldly artistic talent. Edgar slowly figures out the evil power confronting him and the rules of the supernatural world Stephen King has drawn around him. Edgar's progress along both paths is braided into a story that binds our attention. Some find the pace slow between the book's scarier events, but this time is well used to show the steady progress of Edgar's physical recovery and deepening friendships.

It surprises no one when this author tells a superior horror tale. But I am repeatedly impressed at how sensitively he captures real-life experiences. The love-hate buffetings and children-in-the-middle conflicts of Edgar's split family ring true and provoke pangs of sympathy. Edgar's stages-of-grief coping process with his lost arm also feels right. The book's treatments of death--death of ordinary individuals far from the book's eerie events--toll true as well. People die abruptly, for no good reason, and leave raveled threads of incompleteness behind them. This is its own kind of horror, which Steven King also shows us in Bag of Bones and Lisey's Story .

Save this book for when you can enjoy long stretches of quiet reading, when you can time your breaks to the chapters, and when you want to be alone. For a real treat, take it to the beach for a few days. And read it at night.

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Jess

Scary

Reviewed in Australia on 2 November 2016

This is my favourite King novel. A good old-fashioned horror story, with the more mature writing which is characteristic of his later work.

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Minglesaurus

fabulous. I've read it a dozen times .

Reviewed in Australia on 15 July 2014

I love Duma Key, it's right up there with the Stand. I'd recommend it to anyone, it's a great read.

One person found this helpful

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Hendrik Rooks

Well written

Reviewed in Australia on 16 October 2021

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Enjoyable read

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Top reviews from other countries

alan loveday

Accept what you get it's always good

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 March 2019

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I have now read more of his books than I can remember. I have never been disappointed sometimes confused and wondering where the book is going ( which is not a bad thing as it keeps you wanting to read more). I particularly like the way the story leads you in to thinking everything is moving forward and everything that's going to happen will lead to something good with no real worries for the leading cast then suddenly ! Well if you've ever read any of his books you never know where it might lead and if you think to do there's a twist.
Another winner😈

11 people found this helpful

SCON

Buy this, you'll be ok!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 December 2016

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I have read almost all of SKs books, and this is one of my favourites, along with the Stand, and the one where aliens come out of people's behinds. Anyway, this is a great read, a slow burner, but a page turner at the same time.

I get really irritated when people describe the plot in reviews.

29 people found this helpful

Jayne, Nottingham

Duma Key - wonderful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 April 2022

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This (close second comes Needful Things) is my very favourite Stephen King book, which I have read more than once. I love the location; I have travelled to the Gulf Coast of Florida yearly for decades and I could really see and feel each setting (many of which are actual places that I have been to) which deepened the story for me. I loved all the characters, I laughed at some of the funny scenes, cried at some of the tragic ones and was terrified at the menace.
Stephen King just gets better.

One person found this helpful

Verna Jarrett

Perfectly crafted creeper.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 February 2020

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My only complaint ever about Stephen King is that his endings are wild: extreme, exaggerated and hard to grasp. His compulsion to provide the Big Horrific Payoff often undermines the wonderfully paced build up (my memory of the raging disappointment at the last third of The Dark Half will never leave me...) Not so in Duma Key. It is a beautifully balanced work, intriguing and crawlingly creepy.

3 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Amazing book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 August 2019

Verified Purchase

If anyone thinks Stephen King was losing his touch, post 2000's, they should read this. Almost a perfect book. Memorable characters, amazing plot. No dull moments

4 people found this helpful

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Duma Key Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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