Saturday, February 4, 2012

Duma Key by Stephen King

A friend suggested I read this book. But he prepped me with the words, “He’s really grown in his work.”  Because of my friend’s remark, I was open to Mr. King’s writing as I had not been in the past.  I marveled at the skill he used to describe the aphasiac experience, being that I grew up with an aphasiac parent. Aphasia being that condition that generally results from a stroke, but in my father’s case, a shrapnel wound to the head in the Battle of the Bulge. I did not look for scary weirdness in the beginning and I sunk so deep into this book, I didn’t realize that the weirdness had already begun.

This first-person narrative from Edgar Freemantle tells the story of a man wounded in a crane accident. It explores the devastation wrought on family and friends, and shows the strength of will to overcome both mental and physical shortcomings. If you lost that connection between your mind and your speech, what would you do? If you had to start all over, how would you feel? If you realized great evil worked through you to get to your family, what would you give up?

Mr. King has long been known as a master storyteller in the science fiction/horror genre. He has gone a step further in this book with emotional and physical drama that bridges the fantasy life with realism at its darkest; a realism that many in our society face with the same emotional struggle.

This is a book worth reading to discover how Mr. King ‘pulls it out of his hat’ yet again.