Throwback Thursday: It by Stephen King

Author: Stephen King
First published in 1986 by Viking Penguin

To the children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry, Maine was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part. A good place to live.

It was the children who saw - and felt - what made Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT reached up, seizing, tearing, killing . . .

The adults, knowing better, knew nothing.

Time passed and the children grew up, moved away. The horror of IT was deep-buried, wrapped in forgetfulness. Until they were called back, once more to confront IT as IT stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality. 

I have been a big Stephen King fan since I was in middle school.  I haven't been much of a fan of his latest offerings, but give me a classic and I'm all over that.  I have read a lot of his books, but I had never read It.  With the recent release of the remake movie, I was curious to see if the book lived up to the hype.  It does and doesn't.   It is really long.  Probably longer than it needed to be as I felt like I was listening to the audio-book forever.  I think had I not seen the 90s version of the made for TV movie, I would have been a bit more creeped out by the story.  That movie surprisingly got a lot of the book right.   I also started feeling a bit nostalgic because I felt like I was listening to old-school King.  That man does know how to spin a tale. 

I'm going to rant for a bit, so beware... If asked about  3.4 of the way in, I would have rated the book at 4 stars, taking one off for length. Then the last part of the book came on and I was appalled.  I know that King does a lot of gruesome stuff for shock value and not much shocks or disgusts me. However, what he had the 11 and 12YO losers' club do to find their way out of the tunnels after defeating It was close to child pornography.  I'm not going to sugar coat it.  That was gross and unnecessary.  I don't want to read about 12YOS having sex or "flying" because of it.  Eww. This scene is the biggest reason I wouldn't recommend It without warning.  I have polled a few people who have read the book in the past and none of them seem to remember that particular scene.  Perhaps the omission of that scene in the 90s movie have helped to wipe their memory of it?  Ok, rant over.  At any rate, the rest of the story is a long yet creepy monster story.  If you haven't read it, go in with caution.