Title: IT
Author: Stephen King
Rating Out of 5: 5 (I will read this again and again and again)
My Bookshelves: Horror, Thriller
Dates read: 22nd June – 11th October 2019
Pace: Slow
Format: Novel
Publisher: Hodder
Year: 1986
5th sentence, 74th page: The door had opened at quarter past nine and in he had ambled, wearing jeans and a GO ‘BAMA tee-shirt and his old engineer boots, looking like he’d come from no farther away than cross-town.

It is the children who see – and feel – what makes the small townh of Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurks, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one’s deepest dread. Sometimes IT reaches up, seizing, tearing, killing…

Time passes and the children grow up, move away and forget. Until they are called back, once more to confront IT as it stirs and coils in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.

This is my first ever Stephen King. It’s also my first ever full-length horror novel. I was kind of scared to start it – horror is not a literary genre I’ve really spent much time with… but man am I glad that I did! Totally understand why so many people love Stephen King, and now I want to fill my shelves with his terrifying tales too…

When I started reading this book, I was really wigged out by the fact that King dedicated his book to his children. After finishing it? I’m even more creeped out. This is a book about a gruesome apparition of the night killing children… and he dedicated it to his children. Dude. Not cool. But the story also highlights the importance of children and their imagination as our future… so maybe it makes sense?

IT wasn’t as terrifying as I was expecting. Don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t read it late at night, or when I was going to spend the night alone… but it just wasn’t quite as horrifyingly terrifying as I expected. I could actually sleep each night after reading it, and I really wasn’t expecting that. Instead of making me jump at too many shadows, I felt uncomfortable about the state of the world and what people are willing to do to one another. Particularly Beverly’s story… after all, she’s the only woman and so much of what she goes through is what I, myself am terrified of. Each of the seven in fact go through horrors that are human induced. It’s not so much the creature of IT that terrifies… but the things he manages to convince other humans to do to one another…

I loved how the timeline for this tale flickers. Jumping between their childhood (the 50s) and adulthood (80s) two different stories that are eerily familiar echo one another. I loved the parallel storylines and the mystery of just what happened underground. Instead of giving anything away, you have to read to the end to find out how both storylines end. It’s almost impossible to put down, even if it is over 1,000 pages! Definitely a great introduction to the writings and insane inner workings of Stephen King.

<- The Institute Review

Joyland Review ->

Image source: Amazon