Book Review: It by Stephen King

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“Maybe . . . there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends — maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.”

📚

Derry, Maine, is a small city where horrors and hauntings are real, and where a vile, sewer-dwelling monster preys on children. A place where seven outcasts — a Losers’ Club composed of six boys and one girl — found companionship and battled malevolence, and where, as successful adults scattered across the globe, they’re summoned — to honor a promise they made 27 years ago — when their old foe resurfaces. Can they remember what happened that fateful summer, face the fiend once again, and make it out alive?

It is a sprawling, reality-bending cosmic horror epic that unfolds via dual timelines: Derry beginning in fall 1957 interspersed with a contemporary timeline commencing in 1984, filling in the “then” and “now” of each character’s life as they return to their hometown (with the exception of one who remained). The book is rich in descriptive and sensory detail, creative supernatural and Lovecraftian aspects, fantastic gothic elements, and laugh-out-loud funny moments, which balance the unrelenting tension, dread, and gore.

Fascinating interludes delve into Derry’s blood-soaked, downright bizarre history where patterns of tragedy, murder, disaster, carnage, and mayhem stretch back to the early 1700s. The city is an archetype for the worst of humankind: racism, prejudice, trauma, and awfulness of every kind run rampant (think anti-semitism, misogyny, homophobia, bullying, harassment, fatphobia, abuse, cruelty, brutality, ignorance, violent crime, and more). The big bad, the sinister something feeding on Derry is formidable: it possesses numerous skills, including the ability to transform into whatever an individual fears most, producing a race to beat the devil that borders on impossible.

Friendship, boyhood, and the male gaze are focal points, as is the exploration of aging, mortality, and the delicacy and ephemerality of existence. Fear is a fertile force, flaws and weaknesses unexpected advantages, children the ultimate wielders of belief and imagination. No character or incident is a throwaway: a wonderful, omniscient narrative voice pulls from the past and reveals the future, seamlessly connecting characters and events while tackling monumental questions concerning reality, destiny, control, purpose, preordination, the universe, higher powers, and good versus evil.

“It” is multifaceted; it’s not only the rot beneath Derry — an all-knowing, child-eating creature — but the scary, mysterious thing about which adolescents so often wonder and whisper: sex. Change is a constant: all children, as they transition into adulthood, will inevitably forget the skills, people, and experiences that were formerly vital to their survival. These facets produce a novel of astounding scope, a deep-dive into bonds, faith, luck, and will; memory, instinct; pain, and disquiet; fate, rage, revenge, and hate; darkness, order, rituals, and time; eternity, insight, spirituality, and salvation; cosmology, cycles, perspective, and magic; and triumph, ecstasy, reflection, and self-actualization.

Chapters begin to bleed into one another (a unique and satisfying format later emulated by Joe Hill in NOS4A2), creating a delicious sense of urgency and disorientation, a tale where rediscovering lost childhood memories can be both gift and curse, poison and salve: a mind-blowing saga surrounding the enduring power of love and desire and the precarious nature of humanity. A chronicle that’s brutal and unflinching, deft and wise, offensive and beautiful, unseemly and inspired, exhausting and immersive, flawed and staggering, appalling and innovative, upsetting and wondrous, and, ultimately, an absolutely awe-inspiring ride.

Recommended Further Listening/Reading: (contains spoilers)

• Talking Scared Podcast Episode 148: Feral Childhoods — The Big It Deep-Dive (Part One)
• Talking Scared Podcast Episode 149: Clowns at Midnight — The Big It Deep Dive (Part Two)
• “The Great Stephen King Reread: It” by Grady Hendrix (mentioned on Talking Scared Episode 148 and included in the show notes)

🖤Amanda

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