It: A Novel
Stephen King’s classic #1 New York Times bestseller and the basis for the massively successful films It: Chapter One and It: Chapter Two as well as inspiration for HBO Max’s series It: Welcome to Derry—about an evil without a name: It.
Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real.
They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made twenty-eight years ago calls them to reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.
Readers of Stephen King know that Derry, Maine, is a place with a deep, dark hold on the author. It reappears in many of his books, including Bag of Bones, Hearts in Atlantis, and 11/22/63. But it all starts with It.
“Stephen King’s most mature work” (St. Petersburg Times), “It will overwhelm you…to be read in a well-lit room only” (Los Angeles Times).
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Readers say Stephen King’s *It* is a gripping, chilling horror novel set in Derry, Maine, where an ancient evil resurfaces every 27 years. Many praise...
There’s a lot I like about this book. It delivers on chills, thrills, scares, and the creeps, all wrapped up in a clever story and evocative writing that somehow holds this massive tome together. Yet, it’s not really my kind of book, and that has nothing to do with the usual criticism thrown at Stephen King’s work over his use of racial slurs.
The book is largely set across two time periods: the late 1950s and the mid-1980s. Pretending racist slurs simply weren’t part of everyday life during those periods would be ridiculous. King portrays racism in different ways: through openly bigoted characters who say and do explicitly racist things; through ordinary people, such as parents of MCs and townsfolk, who are conditioned to see Black people differently and have their own internal explanations for why things are the way they are, while outwardly remaining polite; and through kids who repeat what they’ve seen and heard around them or in the media without really understanding the impact of what they’re saying.
Either way, imagine someone reading this 50 years from now and believing that everyday life for a Black kid back then wasn’t all that bad because, apart from the obviously terrible people, everyone else spoke to them without using slurs and welcomed them without any implicit discomfort. That would paint a pretty dishonest picture. So, I don’t personally find this aspect problematic.
Objectively, the book ticks all the boxes. It just didn’t feel right for me while I was reading it.
The story is set in the fictional town of Derry, Maine, which is plagued every 27 years by an ancient, shapeshifting evil that typically appears as Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
1958 Timeline: Seven outcast children, known as the "Losers' Club," bond over their shared encounters with the monster and their struggle against local bullies like Henry Bowers. They eventually confront IT in the sewers, believing they have defeated it.
1985 Timeline: As adults, the group has forgotten their childhood trauma until a new wave of murders begins. Mike Hanlon, the only one who stayed in Derry, calls the others back to fulfill a blood oath to destroy IT once and for all.