It (novel)

It

First edition cover
Author	Stephen King
Cover artist	Bob Giusti (illustration) Amy Hill (lettering)
Country	United States
Genre	Horror novel Coming-of-age story
Publisher	Viking
Publication date	September 1986
Pages	1,138
ISBN

It is a 1986 horror novel by American author Stephen King. The story follows the exploits of seven children as they are terrorized by the eponymous being, which exploits the fears and phobias of its victims in order to disguise itself while hunting its prey. "It" primarily appears in the form of a clown in order to attract its preferred prey of young children. The novel is told through narratives alternating between two time periods, and is largely told in the third-person omniscient mode. It deals with themes that eventually became King staples: the power of memory, childhood trauma, and the ugliness lurking behind a façade of traditional small-town values. The novel won the British Fantasy Award in 1987, and received nominations for the Locus and World Fantasy Awards that same year.Publishers Weekly listed It as the best-selling book in the United States in 1986.

During the beginning of a particularly perilous storm in Derry, Maine six-year-old George "Georgie" Denbrough is chasing a boat made from a sheet of newspaper down a gutter. The boat is washed down a storm drain to the dismay of George, who had received the boat as a present from his older brother Bill. After peering into the drain, George sees a pair of glowing orange eyes which he first believes to be a cat trapped in the sewers. Startled, George watches in confusion as he is suddenly confronted by a man dressed in a silver clown suit with tufts of red hair and orange pom poms who introduces himself as "Mr. Bob Gray" aka "Pennywise the dancing clown". Pennywise offers George a balloon which he cautiously refuses, however the clown entices George to reach into the drain to retrieve his boat and then rips his arm off, leaving the boy in the gutter to bleed to death. Many neighbors on the block immediately hear George's screams and rush to find the boy dead.

The following June, Ben Hanscom, an overweight child, is harassed by a gang of bullies led by the psychopathic Henry Bowers. On the last day of school, he hides from his tormentors in the Barrens, where he befriends Eddie Kaspbrak, a hypochondriac boy who believes he has asthma, and "stuttering" Bill Denbrough, George's elder brother who suffers from a terrible stutter and rides on a rusty bike named "Silver". The three boys later befriend fellow misfits Richie Tozier, Stan Uris, Beverly Marsh and Mike Hanlon, who refer to themselves as the "Losers Club." The friends realize that they have all had encounters with a seemingly omniscient demonic entity that takes the form of whatever they fear the most: (Ben as a mummy, Eddie as a leper, Bill as George's ghost, Richie as a werewolf, Stan as two boys who had drowned in Derry's Standpipe, Beverly as tormented voices of children and gouts of blood from her bathroom sink and Mike as a flesh-eating bird). Due to the unknown origin of the monster, the Losers refer to the creature as "It" and link It with a series of recent child murders, including that of Edward "Eddie" Corcoran who is killed by It in the form of the Gill-man. Meanwhile, an increasingly sadistic Henry begins focusing his attention on his neighbor, Mike Hanlon, and his father due to their ethnicity. Henry and his gang initiate a rock fight with the Losers. However, the bullies are left defeated and embarrassed, with an injured Henry swearing revenge on the Losers before departing. After further encounters of It in the form of Pennywise and various other manifestations the Losers construct a makeshift American-Indian smokehole which Richie and Mike use to hallucinate Its origins. In doing so they discover that It came to Derry millions of years before in an asteroid impact and that every twenty-seven years It awakens from a slumber underneath the town's sewers, usually after some kind of terrible event or tragedy to feed on children for a period of twelve to sixteen months. Bill then discovers the "Ritual Of Chüd", an ancient ritual that allows him to enter the "Macroverse" where It originated from. Bill encounters Mataurin or "The Turtle", the creator of the universe and the natural enemy of It who further explains Its origins.