"IT" by Stephen King
To preface this, the book is nothing like the movie. It's absolutely nothing like the movie. They took the characters' names and three isolated events from the book that were roughly three pages long each, and then made a movie out of that. If you watched the movie, don't associate it with my following review.
Heads up, I ABUSE brackets (constantly), and another FYI: There’ll be a level of abuse/sex/gore talk, so it might be in your best interest to skip this review if you’re sensitive to that.
IT (by Stephen King) was super crazy, I loved it, and my overactive imagination did too. The characters are pretty good (I'd kiss Richie Tozier on the lips in a mildly homoerotic way), the story is laid out so nicely and the word choice is insane. Even as someone who’s not a native speaker but started English along with basic multiplication, I’ve had to search up some words. Sure, the book might have given me nightmares about flying leeches biting dime-sized holes into my arms and flying into my mouth to then blow up to the size of a balloon as they fill with my blood, but it was fun to read. Wild ride. I also liked the perspective switch, graphic detailing, and the way that the horrible events described were used as a vessel to talk about bigger things. This book basically scratched all of my itches. A need for gore, a need for emotional depth, a need for comedic relief, a need for poetry, a need for murder and for horrors beyond my comprehension.
Ok, I'm gonna elaborate a bit further to do the story justice. I drip-fed the book to myself slowly, reading a bit every day, five days a week, and it took me... weeks. Well, currently it's one of my favorite books and there's good reason for it. First off, the perspective switches were awesome. Point, end of the story, I don’t care how you stand to Stephen King himself, the plot or anything else relating the book. Incredible. I like how you were able to see everything from everyone's perspective, how there were subjective and objective accounts of things, diary entries, news articles, etc. Had me cumming and nutting I swear to god and little baby jesus, it's so good.
Second, the family dynamics were well-written. I'm a cause-and-effect type of guy, and I like when characters are fleshed out, and there's a rhyme and reason as to why they're the way they are. King (Stephen King, the author) executes this fantastically by letting you meet the families of most of the losers (that's what they call the main characters if you were unaware.)
For example, we're introduced to Bill's post-Georgie apathetic, cold family (giving him a motive to kill IT, since he thinks it'll make his family care about him again). We meet Eddie Kaspbrak’s mother, a fat and overly emotional lady that sort of abused him (I'm sure that the way she treated him was abusive actually) and she ended up really shaping his character from a young age.
Mike Hanlon's family was awesome and supportive though, real model family, but he got crap for being african american (the story’s set in 1958, it was really bad for Mike). Richie Tozier also had a good family (probably the most normal), and Stan Uris did as well (he went birdwatching a lot with his dad.) Bev's family, I think, was the worst of all because her dad physically and emotionally abused her, and well as attempting to sexually abuse her. This is later reflected in the man she marries, Tom, who physically, emotionally, and sexually abuses her. It was very hard to read, I'm gonna be honest. I didn't know what it feels like to read something with a lump in your throat until I read the parts about Tom and Beverly. Plus, it's like... ultra-triggering for survivors of abuse, it was pretty triggering to me, so I'd discourage anyone who went through that kind of stuff from reading. If you really wanna read IT though, as a sexual assault survivor or someone who’s easily triggered by stuff related to SA, you should skip over the Beverly POVs because frankly, they're just brutal.
Well, on a lighter note, I like how Stephen King wrote sex in this book (it's a continuous theme.) And before you judge me, I'm praising him for being thorough enough, but also vague enough. The story is not an erotica, it's not meant to be hot. Sex is mentioned as a form of bond, as a form of abuse (holy shit there's so much abuse in this book, it's absolutely packed with it), and also mentioned in the "losing your childhood / growing old" sort of way which becomes VERY important later in the story. Sex is only insinuated in the story, it's not graphic, you don't get any action out of it and it's only for the plot which I find awesome. Even in the part where adult Bill cheats on his wife with also-adult Beverly (lol), sex is only insinuated, even though it's the only actual erotic scene in the book. Felt like mentioning it on the side, but I *do* think that the way that King wrote about ten-year-old Beverly Marsh’s body way very, very weird; but I was able to let it slide because it wasn’t too frequent and medium in severity. Still think King is kinda messed for describing a kid’s body that way.
Lastly, the poetry is crazy good, and the way he strings together the literal dozens of characters with their own individual stories and experiences is so well-executed. King unironically sat down, created a masterpiece, and dipped. Everything fits into place, all the experiences come together to form this... beautiful picture with no loose threads. Everything ties off together, there are no plotholes and the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. I'm getting goosebumps and a boner thinking about this (I'm a writer, how could you tell?), but the only thing I didn't like about the book is how it ends. I’m gonna ruin Christmas, but essentially IT ends with all of them moving to different states/places and forgetting each other, like, a full memory wipe, and just going back to their lives before that. They're slightly improved though, because Bev leaves her abusive husband and Ben gets a promotion, along with Bill's depression lightening up.
Now comes something that really ruffles my feathers. I hate Ben's and Beverly's relationship toward the end. I hate, hate, hate it. If the word HATE was printed tiny, 10 times onto every square inch of the 1184 pages of the IT paperback, it wouldn't be able to touch the amount of HATE HATE HATE that I feel for the relationship between the two. Bev could have ended up with anyone else. Richie would’ve been ideal, maybe Eddie, hell, Bill would have even been fine if his wife had died. But Ben? Ben the weirdo who's fantasized about touching her breasts starting in fourth grade? Ben who never got over her, even as she was married? Ben who couldn't back the heck off? Ben, the lonely pig who I wished had died instead of Eddie in the finale of the book? I guess he's not as bad as Tom, but holy, I was dreading the Bev&Ben arc, and it ended up being confirmed at the end of the book. Screw that, bro.
Still doesn't take away from how good the book was. I'd rate it a solid ten.