IT

Reading a 30-plus-year-old, 1,153-page book seemed to make sense before the release of the second part of the cinematic movie adaption. 

But opening the first pages of Stephen King’s “IT,” the heft of the book in hand, so many pages ahead, it seemed a chore, even an arduous task, in the dripping heat of a late South Georgia August.

At least for a page or two.

There’s a reason Stephen King has sold so many books. There’s a reason people who normally won’t take the time to read the back of a Cap’n Crunch cereal box enthusiastically devour King’s often massive novels.

He’s just that good.

And so is “IT.”

King draws readers into his characters, into the details and emotions of their lives, into the weirdness that seeps into what had been a fairly normal life. A life like the lives of friends and relatives, or lives like yours and mine … but suddenly gripped by vampires, werewolves, dead things, ghosts, demons, ghouls, alien domes and resurrected cats.

Of course, the real terror of King’s novels is he grounds these creatures in real-world, heart-breaking fear: alcoholism, domestic abuse, bullying, authoritarian control, technology, pain, death of a child.

In “IT,” King touches upon all of these subjects, centering on a group of friends who battle a demon that appears as a clown named Pennywise.

Every 27 years or so, death falls upon the town of Derry, Maine. Cataclysmic death – brutal killings of youngsters, a repeating cycle of horrors that lasts for a year to 18 months usually culminating in a lethal disaster.

In the book, the story starts in the 1950s when Pennywise returns to Derry but is thwarted by a group of outcast children. The children vow to stop him again if and when he returns.

Nearly three decades later, in the 1980s, Pennywise returns to Derry and so does the group of friends, now in their late 30s.

With more than 1100 pages, King takes his time with each of the friends; readers get to know each one of them from the 1950s and in the 1980s. King paints a detailed picture of a town that seems to know but forgets and ignores its painful legacy, though everyone seems disturbed by it like something always under the surface, like a large fish splashing in the dark waters of a deep well.

And he unravels a genuinely frightening story.

Unlike the movies, which splits the storyline between the friends as children and the friends as adults, the book intertwines the two periods, masterfully moving back and forth between each era.

“IT” is a big book, but even at 1,153 pages, it isn’t a long book. The narrative moves too quickly to be considered long.

“IT” ranks with King classics such as “The Shining” and “Pet Sematary.” Definitely worth a read before or after seeing the second “IT” film scheduled for release this week in movie theaters.