After the death of the mother, Stephen King moved to Boulder- a small town forty-five kilometers from Denver, capital of the state of Colorado. In Boulder, King composed " Shine"is one of his most frightening novels. An event occurred in the same town that served as the starting point for the creation of the novel. "It"- an equally famous work by the master of horror, the film adaptation of which is being released today.

A great opportunity to find out where the clown's story began Pennywise.

King Family (clockwise): Tabitha, Owen, Steven, Naomi and Joe. 1979

The year was 1978. King, his wife Tabitha, eldest daughter Naomi and two sons - seven-year-old Joe and one-year-old Owen - had lunch at a local pizzeria and returned home in their brand new Matador ( approx.- the same driver Christopher Lee in the film " The Man with the Golden Gun", the ninth Bond film). Along the way, the car's transmission failed, and the King family was stuck right in the middle. Pearl Street. Later, the author recalled how he was worried about the inconvenience that he caused to other road users, and the company’s service center employees who arrived at the scene of the breakdown only aggravated his worries. While the technicians carried out on-site diagnostics, the writer only smiled embarrassedly and helplessly. After inspection, the Matador was towed to a service station and King waited for the call.

Two days have passed. Around five o'clock in the afternoon the writer was contacted by telephone by a representative of a local car dealer. American Motor Company and said that the car was in perfect order and King could pick it up. King's house was only three miles from the service station and at first he thought about calling a taxi, but changed his mind and decided to walk.

Troll under the bridge. Illustration for a fairy tale. Hood. Otto Sinding

The AMC office was located in an industrial area, a mile from the cluster of fast food restaurants and gas stations that abounded in east Boulder. There was only one narrow and dimly lit path leading there, and by the time Stephen got there, it was already getting dark ( approx.- Buolder is located among the Rocky Mountains, and therefore it gets dark there quite quickly). Soon the writer realized that he was walking along the road completely alone, and the path to him was a dilapidated wooden bridge spanning a stream. Stepping onto the bridge, Stephen began to listen to the dull sounds of his steps made by the worn heels of his cowboy boots, and remembered a Norwegian fairy tale. A children's story told about a troll living under a bridge, and King found himself thinking: what would he do if a monster called out to him from under the bridge?

King immediately hit on the idea of writing an urban story about a real troll under a real bridge.

Stephen King in his office

When the writer got to the office, signed all the papers, paid and took his Matador, he completely forgot about the inspiration that had visited him. Later, the author recalled that this happens all the time with his ideas: some are born and die out; others bounce back like a yo-yo. This is what happened with the bridge and the troll. The writer used his walk as a starting point and began to reason that the image of the bridge could be transferred to the whole city, and the troll’s habitat would be what is located under the city - a system of sewer tunnels.

Another year passed until King remembered his childhood years spent in the city. Statford, pcs. Connecticut. There was a city library, the adult and children's rooms of which were connected by a corridor. Stephen decided to add the image of the corridor to the image of the bridge and use it as a symbol of the transition from childhood to adulthood. Another six months passed, and by the summer of 1981, King found himself at a peculiar point:

« I realized that I should either write this story about the troll, or make it so that he is It? - left behind forever A". Four years later, the book was ready: once on store shelves, the novel debuted at number one on the bestseller list. The story of Pennywise maintained its unconditional leadership for 14 weeks.

I dedicate this book with gratitude to my children. My mother and wife taught me to be a man. My children taught me how to be free.

Naomi Rachel King, fourteen years old.

Joseph Hillstrom King, twelve years old.

Owen Philip King, seven years old.

Guys, fiction is truth hidden in lies, and the truth of fiction is quite simple: magic exists.

Shadow of the past

They're starting!

Perfections intensify,

Flower opens bright petals

Wide towards the sun,

But the bee's proboscis

Misses them.

They return to the rich land,

You can call it crying

Which spreads through them with trembling,

When they fade and disappear...

After the flood (1957)

The beginning of this horror, which will not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ends at all - was laid, as far as I know and can judge, by a boat folded from a sheet of newspaper, sailing along a rain-swollen ditch.

The boat nosed down, heeled over, righted itself, bravely navigated the treacherous eddies and continued sailing along Witcham Street to the traffic light at the intersection of Jackson Street. In the afternoon of that autumn day in 1957, the lamps were not on on any of the four sides of the traffic lights, and the houses around them were also dark. It has been raining non-stop for a week, and the last two days the wind has increased. Many areas of Derry were left without electricity, and it was not possible to restore its supply everywhere.

A little boy in a yellow raincoat and red galoshes ran joyfully next to a paper boat. The rain has not stopped, but has finally lost its strength. He knocked on the hood of his raincoat, reminding the boy of the sound of rain on the roof of a barn... such a pleasant, cozy sound. The boy in the yellow raincoat, six years old, was named George Denbrough. His brother, William, known to most children at Derry primary school (and even to teachers who would never call him that to his face) as Stuttering Bill, was left at home recovering from a bad flu. That autumn of 1957, eight months before the real horror came to Derry and twenty-eight years before the final denouement, Bill was eleven years old.

The boat George was running next to was made by Bill. He folded it from a sheet of newspaper, sitting in bed, leaning back against a pile of pillows, while their mother played “Fur Elise” on the piano in the living room and the rain beat tirelessly on his bedroom window.

A quarter of the block away, closest to the intersection and the non-working traffic light, Witcham was blocked by smoking barrels and four orange barriers, shaped like sawhorses for sawing wood. Each crossbar was stenciled with the words "DERRY PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT". Behind the barrels and barriers, rain splashed out of storm ditches clogged with branches, stones, and piles of clumped autumn leaves. At first, the water released thin finger-like streams onto the tar, then began to rake it in with greedy hands - all this happened on the third day of rain. By noon on the fourth day, chunks of road surface were floating across the Witcham and Jackson intersection like miniature ice floes. By this time, many Derry residents were nervously joking about the arks. The Department of Public Works managed to keep Jackson Street moving, but Witcham was closed to traffic from the barriers to downtown.

However, now, and everyone agreed, the worst was behind us. In the Badlands, the Kenduskeg River rose almost flush with its banks, and the concrete walls of the Canal, the straightened riverbed in the central part of the city, protruded mere inches from the water. Right now a group of men, including Zach Denbrough, Bill and George's father, were removing sandbags that had been dumped in a panicked rush the day before. Yesterday, the river's overflowing its banks and the massive damage caused by the flooding seemed almost inevitable. God knows, this has happened before: the 1931 disaster cost millions of dollars and claimed almost two dozen lives. Many years had passed, but there were still enough witnesses to that flood to frighten others. One of the victims was found twenty-five miles east, in Bucksport. The fish ate the unfortunate man's eye, three fingers, penis and almost his entire left foot. With what was left of his hands, he held tightly to the steering wheel of the Ford.

But now the water level was falling, and with the commissioning of the new Bangor Power Station dam, upstream, the threat of flooding would cease to exist altogether. That's what Zack Denbrough, who worked at Bangor Hydroelectric, said. As for the others... for that matter, they weren't particularly interested in future floods. It was about getting through it, getting the power back on, and then forgetting about it. Derry had learned to masterfully forget tragedies and misfortunes, and Bill Denbrough was to learn this over time.

George stopped just beyond the barriers, at the edge of a deep chasm that cut through the hard surface of Witcham Street. The crevice crossed the street almost diagonally, ending on the other side about forty feet below the place, to the right of the pavement, where George stood. He laughed loudly (a sonorous childish laugh that brightened the grayness of the day) when, by the whim of the running water, his paper boat was dragged onto the small rapids formed on the washed-out tar. The flow of water cut a diagonal channel through it, and the boat rushed across Witcham Street with such speed that George had to run as fast as he could to keep up with it. Water flew out in dirty splashes from under his galoshes. Their buckles jingled joyfully as George Denbrough raced to his strange death. At that moment he was filled with pure and bright love for his brother Bill; love - and a bit of regret that Bill cannot see all this and participate in it. Of course, he would try to tell Bill everything when he returned home, but he knew that his story would not allow Bill to see everything in great detail, as would happen if they switched places. Bill read and wrote well, but even at such a young age, George was smart enough to understand that this was not the only reason why Bill’s report card showed only A’s and his teachers liked his essays. Yes, Bill knew how to tell stories. But he also knew how to see.

The ship shot through the diagonal channel, it was just a folded sheet of classified ads from the Derry News, but now it seemed to George that it was a speedboat from a war film, like the ones he sometimes saw with Bill on Saturday mornings at the town cinema . From a war movie where John Wayne fought the Japs. Spray flew from the bow of the paper boat in both directions, and then it reached the storm drain on the left side of Witcham Street. In the place where two streams met (one flowing through a crack in the tar, the second through a storm ditch), a rather powerful whirlpool formed, and George thought that the water would pull the boat and turn it over. Indeed, it tilted dangerously, but then George let out a joyful cry as the boat righted itself, turned around and rushed down towards the intersection. The boy rushed to catch up with him. Overhead, the October wind shook the trees, which a multi-day rainfall (this year proved to be a very merciless reaper) had almost completely freed them from the load of multi-colored leaves.

“It” is one of Stephen King's most voluminous and profound novels. Making a good film adaptation of this book is not easy. Argentine director Andres Muschietti mastered this, creating an amazing film about friendship, fear and hope. But even he had to sacrifice some of the book. Some scenes and plot lines were not included in the film, while others turned into Easter eggs, which are a pleasure to catch for a King connoisseur.

The editors of MirF walked through the streets of Derry and even ventured into an abandoned house on Nable Street. We talk about the results of our expedition through the pages of the book and the new film.

Time and place of action

One day, on the streets of Derry, a provincial American town, children began to disappear - a monster awakened, hungry for children's fears. In the novel, before the reader’s eyes, two parallel plots develop at once: about adult heroes and their childhood memories, which drag them into an endlessly repeating nightmare.

Andres Muschietti moved away from the book format and divided the chapters of children and adults into two separate stories, of which only the first was included in the film. This weakened the connection between the past and the future, but the plot became less predictable.

Muschietti also moved the action forward 27 years - now it’s not adults who live in the 1980s, but teenagers. This also influenced the fears that haunt the heroes. The werewolves and mummies of 1950s films have been replaced by new horrors - clowns and headless children. Only half of the “losers” have their fears unchanged: Beverly Marsh, as before, is afraid of blood (as well as her own father), Eddie is afraid of diseases, and Bill Denbrough is lured into the sewer by his dead brother Georgie.

The bloody fountain in the bathroom is reminiscent of a scene from A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

The guys take refuge in the Wasteland from the deadly tricks of Pennywise and the Henry Bowers gang. They perceive it as “their” territory, a safe refuge where nothing threatens them. It is thanks to this confidence that children win the “apocalyptic battle of the stones.” But in the film, the Kenduskeg River valley is an ordinary, unremarkable place. The on-screen characters have no attachment to him: at first, Bill even persuades his friends to go there in search of Georgie.

Forgotten Scenes

Even if we take only the line of children, the director missed several large-scale scenes. One of them is the murder of Eddie Corcoran. Eddie and his younger brother Dorsey suffered from domestic violence. One day, the father went completely crazy and killed Dorsey with a hammer, and Eddie, frightened, ran away from home. Unfortunately, in the Wasteland, he came across Pennywise: he took on the image of his dead brother, and then, turning into a swamp monster from the horror film “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” beheaded Eddie. This is not in the film - either the special effects were too expensive, or the director decided not to overload the film with another line with parental cruelty.

The scene with spontaneous turning of pages was replaced by frames switching on the projector - it turned out spectacular!

In the book, children learn the nature of It through the ancient Indian ritual “Chud”. Inhaling the smoke of smoldering grass, Mike and Richie see that Pennywise is an ancient monster who is fueled by childhood fears. This mystery is revealed when Bill enters the void between our universe and other dimensions, where It was born. During the ritual, Bill meets Maturin, the ancient turtle who created the world - from her he learns that Pennywise can only be defeated by the power of the mind.

In the film, the origin of the monster remains a mystery. As actor Bill Skarsgård said, a flashback about the 17th century was cut out of the final picture, which described the backstory of Pennywise and his awakening after millennia of sleep. Perhaps it will be included in the sequel.

In the final battle, Pennywise transforms - but in different ways. In the book, he turns into a huge spider with bulging red eyes, who is waiting for offspring. Moreover, this is only one of the incarnations of the clown, the closest to his metaphysical essence. Its true form is a collection of orange "dead" lights that live in the void between universes. In the film, he rushes about and takes the form of fear of one child, then another. A hint of the lights can only be seen at the end of the film, when Bev looks into the monster's mouth.

Finally, the most controversial scene of the novel was not shown - the group sex of the “losers” with Beverly. In the book, after the final battle with Pennywise, the guys got lost in the labyrinths of the sewers. To restore spiritual unity and find a way out, the children perform this strange and shocking ritual. Of course, no one bothered to film such a scene. According to rumors, Cary Fukanaga, who was originally planned to direct It, was considering including some kind of analogue of it in the film - and was removed from the project.

Stephen King himself admits that he thought only about the emotional side of the transition from childhood to adulthood and likened intimacy to ancient rites of passage. However, most viewers breathed a sigh of relief when this outrage was never shown.

In the film, the "losers" swim together, stare at Bev, and later two of them kiss her, but otherwise everything is innocent

"Losers Club"

In the book, the “losers” always stuck together - this was the only way they could defeat the monster. In the film, their friendship is at some point under threat: after the first foray into an abandoned house, Richie Tozier demands to stop the hunt for the clown, to which Bill, angry, slaps his friend. Bookish Denbrough would never have done this: he understood how important it was to maintain peace in the team.

The characters of the other guys were also reviewed. Beverly's image at first coincides with the literary one: a bright, fighting girl who will give any guy a head start. But her relationship with her father is more complicated. In the book, she is afraid of him, but in her own way she loves him, just like he loves her. Because of this unhealthy love, Bev even marries his copy. In the film, Al Marsh is a real threat to his daughter, and it is because of him that she falls into the clutches of Pennywise. This couldn’t happen to bookish Beverly: she’s not afraid of the clown’s tricks and can stand up for herself.

Rumor has it that in Fukanaga's draft, his father's harassment of Bev was much more explicit.

The character that was cut the most was Mike Hanlon, the narrator and one of the key characters in the book. He shows the “losers” his father’s album with old photographs, which contains evidence of all the misfortunes that have befallen Derry since its founding. Then the children learn that Pennywise is not a person, but something more. In the film, this role went to Ben Hansom.

By the way, Ben is not only an avid reader, but also a talented engineer. In the book, he built a secret underground base for the "losers" and even made a silver bullet intended for Pennywise.

In the book, Mike's father is alive and plays an important role

Eddie is not the brightest “loser”, but he also has a couple of decent scenes. Particularly interesting is his meeting with a leper who treats the boy with a placebo - all this embodies Eddie's fears of disease. In the novel this scene is deeper. The stranger offers the boy intimate services, which reflects Eddie's fears of his awakening sexuality, which were nurtured by his mother. She not only limited her son’s physical development, but also held back his emotional and sexual maturation.

To stop Tozier from saying anything too much, his friends would tell him, “Beep-Beep, Richie.” In the film, this phrase is heard only once, at a rather scary moment.

Villains

Henry Bowers's father in the book was always a scoundrel, and after being injured in the war, he completely went off the rails. He kept snapping at Henry or quarreling with Mike Hanlon's father, whose family he hated because of the color of his skin. On-screen Butch Bowers is also cruel to his son, but still keeps his emotions under control - it’s not for nothing that he works as a police officer. And you can’t call him a racist.

In the film, the Bowers gang doesn't live up to the scumbags in the book.

Apart from a couple of episodes, Henry's gang is much inferior to their book prototypes. In the novel, they, like predators, hunt down the children, inventing new and ever new bullying. Most of their anger is directed at Mike: it comes to the point that they throw mud at the boy and kill his dog.

The craziest member of the gang is Patrick Hockstetter, a sadist and psychopath. As a child, he strangled his younger brother, and when he got older, he began capturing wounded animals and leaving them to die in an old refrigerator in a landfill. He himself died there: giant leeches sucked all the blood out of him, leaving wide bite holes all over his body.

It's a bit of a shame that in the film Patrick is just another victim of Pennywise.

Henry Bowers himself goes crazy when the clown in front of his eyes deals with the remnants of his gang. In the book, after emerging from the sewer, he confesses to the police that he killed his father; he is also found guilty of Pennywise's crimes. But in the film he fell into a well and, it seems, died. But in the sequel it is still possible to play out the book plot if Bowers survived the fall.

Links to the original

In the film adaptation, Muschietti removed or reworked a lot, but compensated for this with Easter eggs and references to the original. One of the most important is the turtle, which flashes here and there. In King's multiverse, the turtle Maturin is the creator of this world and the Guardian of the beam that supports the Dark Tower. In the film, Bill noticed the Lego turtle in Georgie’s room, and then Ben saw the turtle in the water when the “losers” were relaxing at the quarry.

The novel devotes several chapters to the history of Derry. There are a couple of references to her in the film: the children talk about the fire at the Black Mark club and the explosion at the factory. And outside the butcher shop where Mike faced his fear, there is graffiti reminiscent of the massacre of the George Bradley Gang, which terrorized the city in the late 1920s.

The Bradley Gang massacre is one of Derry's many tragedies.

Another eerie moment in the city's history is recalled by a photo Ben saw in Derry's yearbook. There is a picture of a boy's head on a tree. Robert Dohay's head was blown off in an explosion at a metallurgical plant. A second before the explosion took his life, the boy was chewing candy - and his lips were stained with chocolate.

After the tragedy, Robert Dohai's head was found on a neighbor's apple tree.

Patrick Hockstetter saw a red balloon with the words "I Derry" on it before he died. This is a reference to the murder of homosexual Adrian Mellon at the city fair mentioned in the book. That day, his partner noticed a clown with a whole bunch of red holiday balloons with the same inscription. The analogy with Adrian Mellon hints that the book Patrick was partial to men. By the way, this story is based on the real murder of 23-year-old Charlie Howard in Bangor in 1984: then three teenagers beat the man and pushed him into a canal under a bridge.

Trying to cope with his stuttering, Bill repeats the tongue twister “He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts!” Readers will remember that it was she who helped Bill win a mental victory over Pennywise in the final battle. King borrowed this tongue twister from the science fiction novel Donovan's Brain by Kurt Siodmak, where the hero also reads it to protect himself from a hostile hypnotic force.

Several shots show Bill's Silver bike. In the novel, he first saves Eddie's life and, 27 years later, Bill's wife.

The route along which Georgie pursued the paper vessel was also not accidental. Jackson Street and Witcham Street appear several times in the book. As did the orange construction fence, reminiscent of a sawhorse, that the boy hit.

Muschietti did not forget about the guys’ canonical fears. In the final battle, It, turning to Ben, momentarily takes the form of a mummy - Ben was afraid of it in the novel. And during his first visit to Nable Street, Pennywise's fingers briefly transform into werewolf claws. This is an obvious reference to Richie's fear of watching horror movies.

The werewolf Easter egg is so well hidden that finding it is doubly nice

By the way, there Richie comes across clowns, one of which is a copy of Tim Curry from the old film adaptation of “It”.

The filmmakers paid tribute to the first screen Pennywise. Here it is, just to the left of center

In the original, Richie's fear was not clowns, but the animated statue of Paul Bunyan - and it also appears in the film, but it doesn't scare anyone.

The statue of Paul Bunyan actually stands in the city of Bangor, one of the prototypes of Derry

And how many Easter eggs the costume designers hid! One of Eddie's T-shirts features a print of the supersonic Airwolf aircraft from the television series of the same name. On his other T-shirt you can see the car "Christina" from King's novel of the same name. And Richie wears a T-shirt advertising Freese's, a popular Bangor department store.

But the most interesting T-shirt is Bill's. At first glance, it shows an incomprehensible logo on a green background. But if you look closely, you can make out that this is a sign of Tracker Brothers, a Derry shipping company. After 27 years, it is at their factory that the matured Eddie meets Pennywise upon his return to the city.

In the finale, Bev tells the guys that under the influence of Pennywise, she began to forget the events that happened. This foreshadows that the "losers" won't really remember each other until their next meeting with Pennywise. The order in which the guys leave the final scene is also interesting: Stan leaves first, followed by Eddie. This is the order in which the characters die in the book.

There's still hope for Bev and Bill - they're the last to go!

The first part of Andres Muschietti's film adaptation deviates greatly from the book, but the director so accurately captured the mood of the characters that all the inconsistencies fit harmoniously into the plot. And every Easter egg you notice makes your soul warm - and Pennywise is no longer so scary.

I dedicate this book with gratitude to my children. My mother and wife taught me to be a man. My children taught me how to be free.

Naomi Rachel King, fourteen years old.

Joseph Hillstrom King, twelve years old.

Owen Philip King, seven years old.

Guys, fiction is truth hidden in lies, and the truth of fiction is quite simple: magic exists.

From under the blue into the darkness.

SHADOW OF THE PAST

Born in a dead man's city.

After the flood (1957)

Random quote from a book

“He's really cute,” she suddenly thinks, and it's an invigorating thought that removes the scales from her eyes, the kind of thoughts that come to mind when waking up, when the mind has not yet fully woken up. He's wearing a pullover and faded jeans. Brown hair is tied at the back of her head with a leather ribbon, and Beverly immediately remembers the ponytail she wore as a child. She thinks, “I bet he has the dick of a nice, polite student. Long enough to not be self-conscious, but not so thick that you look sassy.”
And he starts laughing again, he can’t help himself. She realizes that she doesn’t even have a handkerchief to wipe up the leaked makeup, and this makes her feel even worse.”

Read the book “It” online

Description of the book "It"

You have decided to embark on a journey through the back streets of nightmares lurking beyond reality, and this book is your guide to a world inhabited by utter horror. Around the bend of the road is a small town where children from a monstrous sect kill everyone who has reached the “age of redemption” - nineteen years old . This is how they honor God’s Word... A new twist - and those who encounter the weak-minded Lawnmower will repent three times. Because Death lurks in the depths of his broken soul... And again the road takes a turn - the dead return to school, returning with a thirst to bring death to the living. And you have to sell your soul to the devil in order to defeat the devil...

Description added by user:

Andrey Sergeev

"It" - plot

Seven children living in Maine encounter something (It), a terrible creature capable of frightening and killing children. Trying to get rid of this terrible monster, they create a group and together they try to kill It. Before they can cope with the creature, the guys have to go through many difficult tests, as a result of which they still kill It. King tells how after this they each live their own lives, grow up, lose touch with each other and forget about what happened. And now, when they are already quite adults, and they have families, It returns! Now grown friends, they find a way to connect with each other and come together to give the final fight. It. Book ends with the friends managing to kill the creature and continuing to live peacefully. But maybe It will come back again someday...

Story

In 1978, King lived with his family in Boulder, Colorado. One evening, he went alone to pick up his car from repair. On his way, he came across an old wooden bridge, and as he walked along it, he remembered a children's fairy tale about three little goats and a troll under the bridge. The idea of transferring a fairy tale to modern life seemed interesting to him. However, King returned to it only two years later and, gradually accumulating ideas and thoughts (in particular about interleaving the narrative of childhood and adult memories), he sat down to write the novel in 1981.

The novel Dreamcatcher mentions a memorial to those killed in the 1985 Derry flood, erected by the Losers to commemorate all the children It killed. The memorial bears the inscription “Pennywise Lives!” In addition, the name of the main antagonist of the novel, “Mr. Gray,” is similar to the name “Robert Gray.”

In the novel 11/22/63, the main character arrives in Derry in the autumn of 1958 and meets Beverly Marsh and Richie Tozier there. He also learns from the residents of Derry about the mysterious murders and disappearances of children and that, “thank God, they are over.”

The film script for Storm of the Century mentions that Kat Withers went to Derry for an abortion.

Henry Bowers, who escaped from the asylum, drives the Plymouth Fury from the novel Christine.

Mike Hanlon's father says his co-worker was black telepathic cook Dick Halloran from The Shining.

The novel Insomnia mentions the 1985 Derry flood.

Awards

1987 "British Fantasy" - Auguste Derleth Prize for best novel.

1987 Third place in the Locus magazine awards in the category best science fiction novel.

1987 Prize from the "World Fantasy Award" in the nomination for best novel.

Reviews

Reviews of the book “It”

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Mariashka_true

I don't like clowns...

Who hasn't heard of this book? Those probably simply don’t exist.

The book is incredibly popular and readable. It is not for nothing that Stephen King continues to use the history of the strange town of Derry in his other works.

The friendship of young children is captivating, as they fearlessly rush to fight evil and worry about the city and other children more than the adults who hide behind the doors of their houses. Their awareness, devotion and love are simply limitless. As adults, they lose these qualities with each passing day. I also liked the interweaving of times and the variety of characters.

I would also like to write a few words about the film. He just disappointed me. So, if you have read the book, I advise you not to watch the film adaptation. Despite the fact that it is very difficult to fit so much information and feelings conveyed by a book into one film, I still hope that there will be a director who will accurately and fully convey the plot and atmosphere of this mysterious story.

Helpful review?

7 / 1

Innochka

Fear... each person has his own, some are afraid of clowns, some are afraid of monsters under the bed, some are werewolves. Everyone has their own IT.

And if these fears and phobias have been accumulating in you since childhood, and one fine day they all begin to become reality, then this is very scary.

An interesting idea and a twisting plot captivate you at first and you try to read the book as quickly as possible to find out how it all ends. But you won’t be able to read it quickly, as the volume of the book is too large and the narrative is drawn out.

Already halfway through the book you begin to understand how it will all end, so interest disappears. Therefore, I read the first half of the book avidly, and barely got through the second half. It’s good that the narrative language is simple, the same as Stephen King usually writes, so the book is easy to understand.

Helpful review?

3 / 0

Mila

This is the biggest book I've read. For a long time I was afraid to pick it up and read it (because I thought it wouldn’t be very interesting). I read the full version (1290 pages).

I think each of us likes to remember our childhood, but not everyone wants to remember their childhood fears. The book is truly creepy and atmospheric. I didn’t want to part with it and I tried to stretch it. She will stay with me forever.

I didn't like the film adaptation. The book is too atmospheric and simply impossible to show on screen. I also really liked that it came out uncensored. Very cruel and in some cases immoral. These moments make her closer to reality, as if no one is immune from this.

Overall 10 out of 10. Great

Helpful review?

3 / 0

Anton Kozyrev

Not everyone can handle it, but in vain...

Before coming to the work of Stephen King, I had the opportunity to watch several films based on his books. Since these films in most cases pleased me, my interest in the original source grew and grew. Finally, my hands reached Mr. King's book. The first of these was "It" - a large novel that I would compare to an epic. A rather strange choice for getting acquainted with the work, since the book is not so well known in wide circles and in most ratings of the best novels of the writer it is not in the first lines. However, I was not mistaken in my choice and after reading the book I can say that many people underestimate it in vain.

I consider one of the main advantages of the book to be parallel narration in different time periods. King not only masterfully combines 2 storylines, but also makes them resonate with each other. However, the downside for me was the constant moving from one time to another in the last part of the novel. I understand perfectly well that this was a deliberate technique of the author, but this feature seemed unnecessary to me. The culmination of events in 1985(!) occurs earlier than the events of 1958. And for this reason, interest in the plot is lost. In my opinion, it would be more correct to finish with the past first, because most readers were interested in how the story ended in the end.

One of the main themes of the work is the growing up of a person. The author is trying to find out where the line between adulthood and childhood lies. In this book we can trace the changes in the characters of the heroes, the motives of their actions; what is the reason that they grew up this way and not others. Such plot features allow me to call this novel psychological.

The novel takes place in the fictional city of Derry, but it’s hard not to believe in its existence - everything is so well-developed. King not only created the geography and infrastructure of the city, but also filled it with a large number of characters. Moreover, they are not stereotyped; each of them has their own special path in life, often associated with some kind of urban history.

A separate book could be written about the main characters. There is no typical “hero”, “the guy”, “sage” and other archetypes. Each of the characters is special. Yes, they have some certain quality that distinguishes them from others, but this is more likely a typical feature of people in general, and not the author’s intention. The only superfluous character I think is Stan. Perhaps King needed it to portray how scary "It" was and how it could affect the character's life. But then why was it necessary to make this hero the main one and devote so much space to him? The author tried to “revive” Stan with some characteristics, for example, a love for birds, but for me he remained a “faceless guy” whom I constantly confuse with Eddie.

The main antagonist is interesting due to the abundance of his images, but at the same time, there is no psychology in him. His “universal” origin does not fit well with his manner of conversation and his actions. I was especially upset by "Turtle" because his lines like "Good job, dude" don't fit with his origins. But I think that's more of a King trait, so I won't quibble.

I may have highlighted more cons than pros, but the reason for this is only because they were “eye-catching”. If I hadn’t touched on the cons, my review would have looked something like this: “The characters are 10/10, the plot is cool, the atmosphere is great, everyone should read it. End".

I don’t regret one bit that I began my acquaintance with King’s work with this novel. For me, as a person who wants to connect his life with literature in the future, it seemed very interesting: for its structure, character development, many descriptions and a good plot. My rating is 7/10, I recommend reading it.

However, I want to emphasize that not everyone will be able to handle this book due to its large size. My publication has 1200+ pages. Also, the novel contains violence, swearing, and sexual scenes. This may be a problem for some, but I believe that this is not a reason not to read It. Still, this is not classical literature.

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2 / 0

The events of the book take place in 57-58. last century. Seven children had to face unimaginable horror - the embodiment of hell, which could destroy them. Almost three decades have passed, and now, having already matured, they will have to again face evil, which seeks revenge in order to finish what it started, what happened 27 years ago. For blood is flowing in Derry again - the creature of a nightmare has returned, which does not even have a name.

The Losers' Club - that's what they call themselves. Outcasts not accepted by society - a stutterer, a bespectacled man, a black man, a Jew, a fat man, a stifled asthmatic and a girl. They are only 11-12 years old when they understand that they can only rely on themselves. The confrontation makes The Losers realize a lot of things. Having ceased to be children, adults are not able to imagine that the killer could be an unreal person; they cannot even see It. The “Losers” understand that their union is more than just friendship. When they are alone, they are weak, but when they are together, no force can compare with the powerful energy that they emit.

One of the main ideas of the novel is that some doors only open in one direction - there are no ways to turn adults back into children. If you think about it, King tells not only a scary story - in the book, mystical horrors go hand in hand with the real horrors that some children have to face: physical and psychological violence in the family, bullying, racial and homosexual persecution, etc. You can predict in advance how childhood trauma will affect adult life. Therefore, when the oath pushes the “Losers” to come to their hometown after 27 years, the heroes doubt that they will be able to recreate the energy that the seven of them synergized.

Large-scale, meticulous work - King spent 4 years creating the book. The characters are as diverse and well-developed as possible - the reader can identify with them. Each of them had to overcome their own weaknesses in the book. Locations – King himself admits that the Heath Dam was taken from his childhood memories of Stratford. And the city itself is also a character and is perceived as a single organism. It is Derry.

Stephen King wanted to develop the idea of an antagonist as a collective image of all monsters and creatures from all worlds - that is why each of the children sees not a single image of It, but what they fear the most, be it: the Werewolf, Frankenstein, Dracula, Jaws, A mummy, dead children, bloody streaks in the bathroom (which hints at fear of sexual abuse from Beverly's father), etc. But It’s favorite form is the clown Pennywise, who outwardly gives joy, but inside is rotten with poison. King also did not forget about his own fears - arachnophobia.

The book is large enough to carry with you - 1248 pages in the Russian translation, 1392 pages in the original. Perhaps someone will find the audio book format convenient. The volume and weight of the book did not cause me any discomfort. All this paled in comparison with the feeling when you are transported into the events of the book so much that you do not notice what is happening around you. Having read a lot of King's works, I can put Ono's book on the short list of the best (purely subjective opinion), since the events that take place in it are truly creepy.

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