duma key

My brother gave me Stephen King's new book, Duma Key. Edgar Freemantle was a wealthy builder who met an accident in a construction site that left him one arm less, a divorcee, and a bitter, angry, self-declared outcast. He goes to live in Duma Key and discovers a strange new talent. Edgar painted frightening pictures of the sunset from his house, and his paintings carried power. He could make things come true when he painted them. Before long he learns that an ancient evil was working through him, through his talent, through his paintings. And when he sought to stop it, the evil awakened and started killing.

I didn't like it that Edgar's favorite daughter had to die, but it has always been things like that that makes Stephen King's novels horrifyingly human. Like Gage Creed's death in Pet Sematary, Charlie's dad's death in Firestarter, Susan becoming a vampire in 'Salem's Lot, and Susan's death in Dark Tower V. It's the death of these loved ones which usually proves to be the undoing of the hero, because the evil uses this to weaken him.

I read one time that Stephen King's novels take the ordinary things in life and twists them into something that scares the daylights out of you. You could almost say 'It could so easily happen to me.' Cujo was like that. In Duma Key you see a broken man redeem himself, becomes a talented painter, and almost succeeds in recovering his life, only to have everything shattered by an evil that he did not understand.

It is, as usual, a masterpiece.