“We all float down here.” –Pennywise the clown
Stephen King is one of the first adult authors I read as a kid. (The first, for full disclosure, was Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park.) My mom saw that I was downing kid’s mystery books like the pez in Ben Hanscom’s pocket and encouraged me to read a book by Stephen King instead. Cujo was the first one I read, and while I wouldn’t recommend letting your ten year old read a book about a rabid family dog that turns murderous, I did enjoy Cujo and find it far more challenging than the hundred page mystery books I had been reading. It wasn’t until I read my second Stephen King book, the criminally underrated The Eyes of the Dragon that I became a lifelong fan of King’s work. I’ve read (and own) almost every one of his books, with the exception of a scant handful. But none have scared me like It.
It is the story of a town in Maine called Derry that’s being terrorized by a killer clown. Or at least, something that appears to be a killer clown. Although there are passages of the story that are told to one character, Mike Hanlon, that happened in various earlier time periods, the bulk of the story is told from interwoven narratives set in the 1950’s and 1980’s.
It’s 1957, and a little boy in a yellow rain jacket has gone outside to play with a paper boat while his older brother recovers from an illness inside. Our young hero Georgie meets up with Pennywise the dancing clown when his boat gets sucked down a drain, and the cataclysmic events of our story begin. The seven children involved in fighting Pennywise tell their story in 1958 and 1984-85, and we come to realize the true horror lurking underneath Derry.
*This review contains massive book spoilers past this point, so beware. I have seen the miniseries but not yet seen the movie due to being a giant wimp about watching horror movies in the theater.*
It is interesting (yet deserved) that the opening scene of Georgie getting his arm torn off by a killer clown and bleeding to death alone in a street is the most iconic of the book and movie, when there are several passages in the book that disturbed me just as much. In fact the very next scene set in 1984, when Pennywise reawakens from his slumber and starts killing again has always made me just as ill, just as unsettled. A happy young gay couple stroll through Derry and are set upon by a gang of bigots. One half of the couple is almost viciously beaten to death until Pennywise shows up and finishes the job.
I have always considered Stephen King a master at making you care for his characters in a very short period of time, and the way you feel sick when Adrian is being beaten and murdered is a testament to his skill. The horror with Georgie is in the gruesome nature of his demise and in his youth. But the horror in Adrian’s end adds the complexity of homophobia, watching someone you love die and being unable to stop it, and a sadistically slow death. There is another scene of similar gut wrenching emotional complexity involving Eddie Corcoran, who we discover is being beaten by his evil stepfather who has already murdered without consequence his little brother. Eddie is hiding from the wrath of said awful stepfather when It comes for him. These passages are not for the faint of heart, and it is the power of the grisly deaths and the tragic characterization that is what sets King above others in the horror genre.
It is for this very reason that I wish Stan had been included more as a character, particularly in POV. We know early on that Stan dies, that he succumbs to the horrors of It returning as an adult and kills himself. I feel while we do gain understanding throughout the book as to why Stan cannot handle the reality of Pennywise, I would have felt the pain of his death more if we had as much focus on him as a character as we do the rest of the Loser’s Club. I felt more for Stan’s wife in her brief chapter where she finds him dead in the bathtub then I did for Stan.
This is not the first time I have read this book, although it has been many years. I was very curious to see if I would still enjoy the portions of the book that focused on the Loser Club’s childhood in the 1950’s far more, and I did. It is clearly an intentional choice by King for our beloved characters to come across as less colorful as adults then they do as children, to parallel the loss of their ability to fight It with the power of imagination, but I still don’t want to read about Bill being bald and Beverly getting beaten by her husband. Necessary elements to the story, but not as enjoyable to read as the monstrous magic that was the Loser Club’s childhood.
And yes, we can’t talk about this book without talking about the completely weird ending.
So our beloved losers decide to trip balls on some smoke and see a giant space turtle that has vomited out the universe and is the potential only source to resist an evil space alien that feeds on scared children, then defeat this giant spider alien with a slingshot, silver slug, speech therapy, an asthma inhaler, and a child sex ritual. Yes you heard me. I love Stephen King. I love this book. I can squint and get over all of these things, and I get what he was trying to go for with the child sex scene (a bonding sequence that indicates the journey from childhood to adulthood) but perhaps…maybe…this could have been accomplished by Beverly kissing all of the boys? The boys kissing each other? Anything, but a child orgy?
But don’t let my criticism fool you. I was an English major (you can spot this by my lack of money and occasional accidental pretension) and therefore, was trained to analyze and critique even that which I love. I would thoroughly recommend this book to fans of horror and coming-of-age stories.
Stay tuned for more book reviews. But in the meantime, don’t get tempted into any sewers, even for an awesome book.
