The novel “It” by Stephen King was published for the first time in 1986. It won the British Fantasy Award.
1957. Georgie Denbrough is taking advantage of the heavy rains to play on the streets of Derry with a paper boat. When it ends up into a gutter, Georgie fears he lost it, but in the gutter’s opening he sees the face of a clown who starts talking to him. When Georgie approaches, the entity with the appearance of a clown kills him tearing him to pieces. It’s just the first of a series of murders that strike Derry.
1985. Mike Hanlon is Derry’s librarian and realizes that a new cycle of strange murders has begun so he calls his six old friends who moved elsewhere but many years before sworn that they would return to Derry if that happened. They had completely forgotten the events of their childhood but Mike’s call starts restoring those memories with the horrors attached to them.
Stephen King started putting together the ideas that formed “It” in the late 1970s and then started writing the novel in 1981 in a deed that lasted over four years as it ended at the end of 1985. The time taken does not only reflect its over 1,000 pages of length but also the complexity of a novel that is certainly horror but also contains much more than that genre.
“It” takes us to the town of Derry, Maine, telling a story set partly in 1957-58 and partly in 1984-85, alternating the two periods with the protagonists as children and as adults. Stephen King builds the setting piece by piece in what may seem a quiet town that actually hides various dark sides. There’s the entity called simply “It” which manifests in various ways, including the clown Pennywise in particular, but human beings can also be evil and there’s no lack of examples in Derry.
In the story set in 1957-58 there’s the formation of the Losers Club, seven kids who form a deep friendship that is a key element of the novel. In that story there’s a certain nostalgia for that age but Stephen King never spares the negative parts, even violent, in this case with the entity but also with the local bullies, with the racists and in some cases with parents.
The realistic part of the story of the Losers is told alongside the supernatural part but the borderline can be blurred. It’s a story that goes under your skin precisely because Stephen King builds it piece by piece by getting the readers involved in their lives. In the story set in 1984-85 you can see all the consequences of the events from 28 years before not only in the fight against It but also in the other ways in which their life was influenced by their traumatic experiences despite having forgotten them.
Generally in coming-of-age novels the protagonists are young adults or at least at the end of their adolescence, in “It” they’re very young but end up involved in a series of events that for them represent a loss of innocence that forces them to an early adulthood.
The novel is very long but in the end we can see the complex intertwining between the lives of the Losers and of other characters, including It since there’s also a dig in Derry’s past history. In the end you can see that all the details, including some mentions of other Stephen King novels, have their point to create that setting and all the emotions associated with it. Sometimes the story of ordinary events slows down the pace but is useful to give completeness to the setting and the development of the important characters.
“It” had two adaptations so far: one into a television miniseries in 1990 and one into two movies released in 2017 and 2019.
“It” is perhaps Stephen King’s greatest masterpiece although it’s difficult to choose the best of his works. For the themes it addresses, I think its length is justified so I recommend reading it beyond genre labels.
