Goddamn, It is long.
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I guess I could elaborate.
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Well, for all Stephen King talks about story, I sure see a lot of places where things could be cut and it wouldn't sacrifice any of the actual plot. It reads like an epistolary of sorts - most of it is just kids telling their encounters with It, and King tries to scare you through this. Killing kids and old ladies is his bread and butter after all.
Seeing the mini-series would fool you. There's very little of the adult side of the story, maybe only 20% of the pages focus on their adult situations. And with six characters, you've got to do the same thing for each of them. Got to talk about their first encounters with It, got to talk about each one's phone call that brings them back together. And you know King shirks no details on each of these. Each one has it's own scare. So it ends up being more of a collection of short stories, each with the same plot.
That's what bothers me. We spend too much time trying to scare people (which has never really worked in book form for me), and too little time finding out how the kids are going to deal with It, Henry Bowers, their parents, and their love for each other. Beverly is my favorite character (and why wouldn't she be? She sounds kind of like my wife). I especially loved her first scene when she meets Richie and Ben and they go to the movies, and then she saves them from the bully Henry. That made me nostalgic for some of the stories I used to write back before I became 'serious', and future-looking for some of the stories I want to write in the future.
But It, for such a short title, sure is unnecessarily long. Was his editor out to lunch?Labels: Stephen King, story