From an early age I had a fascination with cinema. I watched many films that were too old for me to see at a very young and impressionable age. I never look back at that and think ill of my parents for letting this be the case, I thank them for it. I watched scary films about ghosts, monsters, childhood adventures, rabid dogs and scary clowns. As an adult I realised that all of these linked to one thing, Stephen King.
I was born in the 1980s and so didn’t grow up reading his novels, but the 1990s brought on a continuing slew of popular VHS releases of Stephen King adaptations: Stand By Me, Shawshank Redemption, Green Mile, Apt Pupil, Cujo, The Shining and It. I consumed these films, one after the other, terrifying myself but obviously finding some joy in it somewhere. I remember the first time I watched It, it was 1990 and my grandparents were babysitting me, it was absolutely the first time I had seen a scary film, Pennywise the clown waving jovially between the quivering white sheets on the washing line before killing the small girl caught singing Incy Wincy Spider. It was a great entry into fear on screen, it wasn’t until I was a teenager reading Stephen King’s It that I really recognised the true essence of fear that King was trying to convey.
The book is a mammoth read, the most recent edition published to tie in with the release of the 2017 film adaptation was a whole 1,088 pages long. Someone could probably review It by using one word, epic, and that is a very concise summation of the text, but it would be doing the book a disservice. To me (and this won’t be and evidently isn’t the same for everyone) there is not one chapter, paragraph, sentence or word too many in It. Every ounce of the book is subtly important to building up the picture of Derry, and every person, place and experience discussed is vital to the reader’s understanding that Pennywise the Clown is much more than a scary clown and the existence and creation of fear is a complex subject.
The story in its simplest terms is that of a group of children growing up in a small town, Derry, Maine in the late 1950s whose lives are turned upside down when they realise an evil clown killed one of their groups little brother, Georgie. After some investigation and much turmoil they realise that the clown has fed on the town of Derry for hundreds of years and they take it upon themselves to try and destroy It. You may have guessed by the current influx of marketing materials for It: Chapter 2 infiltrating your YouTube recommendations and bus stop posters that perhaps Pennywise survived the attack from the kids and has crawled up from the sewers for another go. You’d be right. 27 years after the children’s first attempt Pennywise has returned to wreak havoc on Derry yet again. The children, now grown into adults, have to decide if they can face It again and kill It once and for all.
The book explores in depth childhood friendships, the essence of fear, the power of memory, the effects of childhood trauma spilling into adulthood, the loss of innocence and ownership of power. King poses the idea of fear being something that is inherited generation after generation and anecdotally he expresses this through political fears and community anxieties manifesting themselves into awful, dramatic and destructive events that occur throughout the decades. He incorporates race relations, LGBT+ hate crime and extreme violent gun crime (all things of which King has spoken out about, enough in fact to be blocked by the current US president on twitter for speaking out politically on these issues) into the text. Through use of these the book becomes a much more tangible living thing, where King enables you to realise that evil lives in very real places. He also teaches us that through acknowledgement of previous experiences of pain and suffering and through our ability to trust and love one another humans can do a great deal of good. The novel is nostalgic, touching, humorous, disturbing, intense and only occasionally frightening, if you’ve never read any Stephen King this would be a challenging way to start but if it floats your paper boat you will want to pick it right back up after only just putting it down. It really is a wonderful book.
It: Chapter 2 comes out in cinema’s today. If you have read the book and love it I hope you find it in you to like the film adaptations. If you liked the film adaptations try out the book. It will fill in all the blanks and enrich what you’ve seen on screen to a degree you wouldn’t have even imagined.
From a constant reader, thank you Stephen King.
Written by Hannah Congrave
