It - Softcover

King, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1444707868 ISBN 13: 9781444707861

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 2011

Synopsis

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE - Stephen King's terrifying classic.

'They float...and when you're down here with me, you'll float, too.'

Derry, Maine is just an ordinary town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part, a good place to live.

It is a group of children who see - and feel - what makes Derry so horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurks, taking on the shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes is appears as an evil clown named Pennywise and sometimes IT reaches up, seizing, tearing, killing . . .

Time passes and the children grow up, move away and forget. Until they are called back, once more to confront IT as IT stirs and coils in the sullen depths of their memories, emerging again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.

About this title

Review:

Stephen King's idea for It came from a favorite childhood image: the entire cast of the Bugs Bunny Show coming on at the beginning. He thought of bringing on all the monsters, one last time: Dracula, Frankenstein's creature, the Werewolf, the Crawling Eye, Rodan, It Came from Outer Space.

It is about a group of adults who were once troubled children in the late '50s--"The Losers." One of them is a best selling horror writer much like Stephen King (or his friend and collaborator Peter Straub). In order to defeat the protean "It" that threatens their hometown, they have to go back- -not only to the town itself, but deep into their childhood memories, to regain the talent for magic they once had. King says It is for "the buried child in us, but I'm writing for the grown-up, too. I want grown-ups to look at the child long enough to be able to give him up."

This huge, baggy beast of a novel is a favorite of Stephen King fans--second in popularity only to The Stand. Perhaps longtime fans develop mental filters for King's sloppy storytelling to tune out the repetitions and silliness. King is like the pointillist painter Seurat: if you stand too close to the little dots, the picture falls apart, and it looks meaningless. That's why he makes the storyscape so big--to take you up to that macro-level where you like the book in spite of its flaws. --Fiona Webster

Review:

One of the greatest storytellers of our time (Guardian)

A writer of excellence . . . King is one of the most fertile storytellers of the modern novel. (The Sunday Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1444707868
• ISBN 13: 9781444707861
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 1088