It – Book Review

Author: Stephen King

1156 pages

Genre: Horror

Synopsis: To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered, a good place to live. It was the children who saw – and felt – what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, It lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each person’s deepest dread. Sometimes It reached up, seizing, tearing, killing… The adults, knowing better, knew nothing. Time passed and the children grew up, moved away. The horror of It was deep-buried, wrapped in forgetfulness. Until the grown-up children were called back, once more to confront It as It stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.

Source: Gifted (in English) – HAUL

I simply don’t know what to say when it comes to this book, it stunned me.

I guess I should start with the beginning. I know there’s a lot of people who say that the pacing is a bit too slow but I couldn’t disagree more. I found its crescendo truly satisfying and the way King shows us the town’s history and the way the kids grew up kept me glued to the pages. We’ve all agreed that King’s a genius but I have to say it again – he’s a genius.

Something that I had never noticed until now are his descriptions – they felt as though they were created in his mind but completed in mine, each reader will imagine everything very differently and that’s okay.

Continuing on the topic of writing, it was simply beautiful how certain chapters flowed into others and how intrusive thoughts were written. To this day, I don’t know how to explain how intrusive thoughs work, but King always knows how to show us how they work.

But all of this great writing doesn’t make the book great, we also need interesting characters.

To me, it wasn’t that they were interesting, it’s that they were real. Even the unrealistically evil characters felt real to me, which was a surprise.

Also, this book’s monster isn’t a McGuffin. It’s throroughly explained and builds on the idea that paranormal monsters might be scary but real ones are even worse. There are bullies, there are racists, there are homophobes, there are people that inflict more pain than It.

That brings me to my next point – this book’s take on horror. There are many underlying subplots but they can be summed up into two ideas – the worst monsters are humans and if you believe something hard enough, you might just will it into existence.

Not only is this book’s story complex, it demands that you pay attention. The characters often bring up stuff that’ll matter in their future and name-drop things you have to figure out.

It’s needless to say that you should read this.

Rating: 5 stars

“We lie best whe we lie to ourselves.”