Stephen King’s It Book Review
It by Stephen King: Book Review
*Warning: this review contains spoilers*
Introduction
Time for an unpopular opinion!
I didn’t love this book.
I know it’s a cult classic, a pop culture phenomenon, and saying you didn’t like it is basically blasphemy because it’s Stephen King’s magnum opus. But there’s actually a lot of reasons that I think this book just doesn’t work for me.
Review
It’s not that there aren’t accomplishments on King’s part with this book. It is actually impressive that he manages to create an entire history for the town his book is set in, his own mini literary universe before literary universes were a thing, there are some genuinely spooky moments involving clown shenanigans. Some of the characters are compelling, particularly Beverly, even if I didn’t like the way all of her storyline was handled, and there is something to be said about the way that King used horror to reinforce themes about trauma. In fact, that’s probably the best feat of the novel. Anyone who has been through any kind of trauma knows that it’s a real kind of horror (as opposed to spooky clown horror), so the way that King juxtaposes real horror with science fiction/fantasy horror is clever and effective. It is also smart to have the bulk of the story take place during the characters’ childhood years. It seems inextricably linked to both horror themes. The supernatural horror aspect needs the characters to be children because the idea of being afraid of scary clowns and abandoned houses just feels so parallel to childhood, to the kinds of fears one has a kid, before they develop fears rooted in adulthood realities. But also because of the trauma aspect of the story. Each of the characters in the book has experienced some kind of significant trauma, and it reflects the way that trauma changes a child—a loss of the blissful fears of childhood when your worst nightmare was just the idea of a clown in the sewer. Now, the children have to grapple with the very real realities and real fears they’ve developed as a result of their traumas. Pennywise being able to manipulate and manifest as their individual fears really helps to drive that point home.
However, the biggest issue lies with how King handles the traumatic scenes in the novel. Often, it gets to a point where it starts to feel gratuitous, especially when it comes to Beverly.
Bev’s childhood trauma in It is the abuse that she suffers at the hands of her father, and somehow these aren’t the parts of the book that manage to be over gratuitous in their depictions. King mostly manages to handle these parts without theme feeling like trauma-porn and essentially tells the reader just what they need to know in order to get the point across. The problem is in the chapters that take place during her adult years, when she is now in an abusive marriage to a man named Tom.
Towards the beginning of the novel, all the members of the Losers Club get introductory chapters into their adult lives to show where they’ve ended up after leaving Darry. For all the other Losers (all male characters, mind you), these chapters are told from their own perspectives. But for Beverly’s adult chapter—the only major female character, mind you—not only is her introductory chapter not from her POV, we have to read about it from her abusive husband Tom’s perspective. We literally have to be inside Tom’s mind during a very, very excruciatingly long chapter describing his horrific physical abuse of Beverly. It’s so disgusting and misogynistic and nauseating to read. I get it. This is horror, and that type of scene is its own type of horror. But carrying on as long as it did, indulging in Tom’s mindset about it instead of being with Beverly in that moment is why it feels so gratuitous and exploitive. It’s hard to read it without getting the distinct impression that King took a certain enjoyment out of writing about a man who beats his wife.
It also seems impossible for King to write about a female character without talking about her breasts every five seconds.
But don’t worry, misogyny isn’t the only terrible thing this book is rife with! There’s plenty of blatant racism, anti-semitism, and homophobia hurled about as well. In fact, for as long as Beverly’s introductory chapter that gratuitously abuses her is, there’s an equally long chapter at the beginning of the book where a gay couple are brutally killed by Pennywise and the investigating police act homophobic while looking into it. Again, it is horror in its own right, and reflective of the time period that the chapter it’s set in, but it just feels gratuitous and over-indulgent. It’s not just a passing remark or two that sets the stage of a homophobic society where the deaths of a gay man aren’t enough to really garner concern and therefore Pennywise can get away with it. It goes on for so long and is so indulgent in its homophobia that at a certain point, I, a sapphic woman, had to put the book down for several weeks and wasn’t even sure I wanted to finish reading. Seriously. I have never read a book by a straight white man with more F-slurs and N-slurs than this book.
I understand that to write a book that criticizes racism or homophobia or sexism, you have to show how they present in society. You have to show the negative and traumatic (and sometimes fatal) effects of them. But at a certain point, there is a line to be drawn between exploring prejudice and its impact and just exploiting it for entertainment. It never really feels like King is actually making any meaningful statement about sexism, racism, or homophobia other than to say that they exist. Yes, I get that Pennywise—the evil bad guy of the hook—is the one killing LGBTQ people and exploiting Mike’s racial trauma or Beverly’s abuse to feed on their fear, so obviously King isn’t endorsing these prejudices, but he’s still exploiting them.
There aren’t any queer characters in this book to feel like a queer narrative is balancing out the rampant homophobia that the reader is subjected to. The homophobia isn’t there to impact any character’s development. It’s just there to be there. (The M/M subplot from It: Chapter Two was added in just for the film adaptation only). King does have one Jewish character, but Stanley doesn’t play any a real major role considering he kills himself. He mostly just exists in the story to be the butt of tired antisemitic jokes. Mike is the only Black character and Beverly is the only major female character. I’ve already explored how Beverly’s treatment is a mockery (and it only gets worse!), and quite honestly I’m not sure that Mike’s storyline feels like a genuine exploration of a Black American’s experience in the 1950s.
Then there’s the issues with the plot… particularly the ending.
There are some decent scenes between the kids in the Losers Club during the portions of the story set in the past that feel like really good scenes just showing kids being kids, hanging out with their friends during their childhood. These scenes work well and reinforce the bond that exists among all the kids. It just would have been nice if King had remembered that they are just kids.
Look, if you’re here, you know which scene I’m talking about. I literally don’t even know why people try and defend it or pretend like it makes any sense at all or isn’t gross.
First of all, they’re just kids. It’s gross. Second of all, even if they weren’t kids, and that aspect of its off-puttingness is taken out, it still makes no sense. How does all the boys having sex with Beverly renew their connection to each other or whatever? The idea is that the whole group is supposed to have a special bond (which they do), but by each of them having sex with Beverly, they’re only… extending… their connection to her, not with each other.
Besides, it’s just a horrific point for Beverly’s arc. It’s gross for any female character to imply that the greatest gift she could give her male friends is sex, or to imply it’s the only way a bond between her and her male friends could last, and it feels like just a blatant excuse for King to have Ben get to be with her when she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings. But given that Beverly is an abuse survivor (with subtle implications that she was being sexually abused as well as physically abused), is having her have sex at thirteen really a good conclusion for her character arc? Is this really a good narrative? Not at all. It’s just insulting to imply that for a child survivor of abuse, her role in saving the day is to have sex with a bunch of boys who she wouldn’t even actually want yo have sex with! Literally, I’m so grossed out!!!!!!
After that, if you can even get past it, and I can’t blame you if you couldn’t, things just start to make less sense. Bill goes into the void of the universe where he meets the magic turtle that created the world. Beverly leaves town with Ben even though she literally never expressed any feelings for him at all and was only ever romantically attracted to Bill, Bill and Beverly do hook up, but then forget each other and so Bill goes back to his wife Audra who he magically revives with the apparent power of him pushing her down a hill on his childhood bike while she’s catatonic. Yeah it’s all very cohesive and makes a lot of sense…
But, wait, didn’t Beverly realize Ben was the one she wanted to be with all along???
No, she didn’t.
There’s nothing from her narrative perspective to imply this. Only’s Ben’s POV implies his feelings for her. Never the other way around, and you shouldn’t want it to be. If it took Beverly seeing Ben as an adult to realize she had feelings for him, it would just be a lame story about Bev not liking him as a kid because he was fat and then realizing when he loses weight that he’s hot, but she’s not that shallow, and that’s not what happened. She didn’t like him more than a friend as a kid or an adult, skinny or fat. She cared for him but never romantically and never for any reason more than why she didn’t have feelings for Richie or Stan… because she just didn’t. She liked Bill the whole time and that never changes.
So why did King have her leave with Ben in the end? I don’t know? Wish fulfillment? It would have been better if he’d explored a shift in Bev’s feelings, but honestly even then it wouldn’t have been great. I would have rather seen Bev actually heal from the trauma of all her abuse then fall in love with a guy she never really liked.
Final Thoughts
As far as what rating to actually give this book, I struggled. I enjoyed the general idea of the thematic concerns, even if the execution was poor. I was impressed with how well the fictional town of Derry was constructed. I liked Beverly’s character even if King doesn’t know how to write female characters. The rest was… a mess. So 2 stars I guess?
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