Review Repost: Stephen King’s It (from @tordotcom)

A number of years ago I decided it would be fun to have a look at some of the classic horror novels from the 1980s: to revisit Dean Koontz, Clive Barker Peter Straub, V.C. Andrews and, inevitably, Stephen King. I loved King as a teen, and I chose this particular book because It has the hallmarks of a master work while, simultaneously, being deeply problematic. My difficulties with It are the same ones every other feminist critic, pretty much, has voiced. Here’s a bit of my take on this novel.

With a huge ensemble cast and overlapping 1958/1985 storyline, It is very nearly seven full novels in one. King’s 1986 bestseller is just about 1400 pages long… and more than once I was almost sorry I hadn’t done the expedient thing and read Christine instead. The themes of the two books are similar: they’re both about adulthood and growing into an acceptance of mortality. In Christine it’s put thusly: “If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being an adult is about learning how to die.”