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A review by alissajayne
It by Stephen King
2.0
I haven’t read a lot of King’s work but of what I’ve read so far, this has been my least favorite.
I wanted to believe that this book needed to be over 1,000 pages long, but it doesn’t. King goes into a crazy amount of detail on every storyline that I wish went into the character development instead. You could argue that Derry is more of a character than any of the actual characters. I think he must have intended all of these detailed side-storylines as character development; I felt like for having spent so much time with each of them I shouldn’t have mixed them up as easily as I did.
Maybe this is just my brain, but the names Eddie and Richie got easily confused for me. Same with Bill and Ben. Stan was such an afterthought for me that I questioned the point of including him at all, although I get that we needed the magic number 7. Mike and Ben were the most interesting characters to me; I wanted to love Bill as much as the others did, but never got there.
As for Beverly… ugh. I could write a whole review on her character alone. King has come a long way when it comes to writing women, and let this novel be a testament to where he began. Beverly is always beautiful, her fiery red hair is always blowing out behind her, her breasts are there… we get it. She goes from getting beaten by her father to getting beaten by her husband… we get it. I guess maybe that’s why I’m supposed to understand the scene where she invites each of them to have sex with her (as children). It would have been way cooler for the lead female character to be at least somewhat strong. Bev is 1000% a victim, a princess to be rescued.
I will say this: King writes a lot of really beautiful passages in here about growing up, getting old, friendship, and life in general. The book is worth it for these musings, and also for the really scary scenes (of which there are plenty). But as a novel, it leaves a lot to be desired — especially after thousands of pages.
I wanted to believe that this book needed to be over 1,000 pages long, but it doesn’t. King goes into a crazy amount of detail on every storyline that I wish went into the character development instead. You could argue that Derry is more of a character than any of the actual characters. I think he must have intended all of these detailed side-storylines as character development; I felt like for having spent so much time with each of them I shouldn’t have mixed them up as easily as I did.
Maybe this is just my brain, but the names Eddie and Richie got easily confused for me. Same with Bill and Ben. Stan was such an afterthought for me that I questioned the point of including him at all, although I get that we needed the magic number 7. Mike and Ben were the most interesting characters to me; I wanted to love Bill as much as the others did, but never got there.
As for Beverly… ugh. I could write a whole review on her character alone. King has come a long way when it comes to writing women, and let this novel be a testament to where he began. Beverly is always beautiful, her fiery red hair is always blowing out behind her, her breasts are there… we get it. She goes from getting beaten by her father to getting beaten by her husband… we get it. I guess maybe that’s why I’m supposed to understand the scene where she invites each of them to have sex with her (as children). It would have been way cooler for the lead female character to be at least somewhat strong. Bev is 1000% a victim, a princess to be rescued.
I will say this: King writes a lot of really beautiful passages in here about growing up, getting old, friendship, and life in general. The book is worth it for these musings, and also for the really scary scenes (of which there are plenty). But as a novel, it leaves a lot to be desired — especially after thousands of pages.