#i'd be revealing shit about me that nobody could waterboard out of me

[sludgest]

> IT by Stephen King

TW: Abuse, Sex talk, Gore, Godawful Shipping etc.

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 like... three pages long each, and then made a movie out of that. If you’re thinking of the movie, don't associate it with my following review, even though I’ll be using movie ss to make the review more visually appealing. I repeat, this is not about the movie.

TW: abuse, sex talk, gore

IT, by Stephen King, was super crazy, I loved it, and my overactive imagination did too. the characters are so 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. Sure, it might have given me nightmares about flying leeches biting dime-sized holes into my arms and flying into my mouth, but it was fun to read. Wild ride. I also liked the perspective switch, graphic detailing, and the way that these horrible events were used as a vessel to talk about philosophy. 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 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 my favorite book (no other books have breached the 10-point mark yet) and there's good reason for it. 

First off, the perspective switches were awesome. Point, end of the story. 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 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 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 Kaspbraks mother, a fat, and overly emotional lady that sort of abused him (I'm pretty sure that the way she treated him was abusive) and really shaped his character from a young age. Mike Hanlon's family was awesome and supportive, real model family, but he got crap for being african american (story set in 1958, it was really bad for Mike). Richie Tozier also had a good family, Stan Uris 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 survivers of abuse, so I'd discourage anyone who went through that kind of stuff from reading. If you really wanna read IT though, you should skip over the Beverly POVs because frankly, they're just brutal.

Well, third, 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 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" 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. 

Lastly, the poetry is crazy, 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. 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. 

(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. 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, maybe Eddie, hell, Bill would have even be fine. 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, fat 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, man. 

Still doesn't take away from how good the book was. I'm rating it a solid ten. 

#josh index #reviewposting #those who got this far #anon - you might be wondering “why didn't josh talk about the symbolism” #because that would take forever #i could write a stephen-king-sized book about the symbolism in this novel #also it would be like #viscerally personal #i'd be revealing shit about me that nobody could waterboard out of me #but yeah that's why i only talked about the book broadly #i barely scratched the surface in this review #and uh #i'm planning on keeping it this way