It would be criminal for me not to blog about my latest completed read. It's definitely not for children but strangely it talks a lot about them.
I was twelve years old when this novel first entered my life, not long afterwards a TV mini series adaptation followed. One which my sister is still scared of to this day, the poor thing was only nine when she saw it and lucky for her, she never read the book.
Cut to 27 years later and I'm in the cinema at age 39 going on 40, watching the second film in a two film series, which retells the story. It was a film I ended up going to see no fewer than 4 times in the cinema. I went first with my boyfriend, then with my son, then with one of my best friends, who is a guy, lastly I went with another of my best friends (lady this time).
On only one occasion, I managed to hold it together and not cry myself into a headache (sorry Alan, I was trying to play it cool and mellow in front of you).
On the other three cinema trips as the story was ending I felt the tears free falling and the breath in my lungs start to catch, as if the little reserves of oxygen in them were being stored for later use. I can remember, especially when sitting next to my son as the soft music played and the characters gave their final grace to the screen, hitching my breath in short gasps, fighting to suck the air in as the crying kept going.
What does this have to do with the book you wonder? Well I shall get to that point now.
In my life I have read this novel (all one thousand, one hundred n odd pages of it) about three times. I feel, although I hope I'm wrong, that having just finished it this morning whilst lying in bed with the sun beginning to glow through the curtains, this will be the last time I do.
After all, it's a massive book and there's lots of other books in the world to read. It would almost be a waste to pick it up and spend my mornings reading it again.
But what is it about this novel that led me on the path to such a connection? Is it the length? Definitely not. Reading it this time around I am stunned into wondering how the hell I got through it at the age of twelve.
I tried to let my sons read it in their early teens and they both quickly grew bored of it. Something about seeing a behemoth of a book is instantly off putting to the eye. It becomes like a marathon that you struggle to complete. Looks like I might never get to finishing Tolstoy's War and Peace (haha).
There are definitely some sections of this book that, while adding to the story, are easily cut out. There is filler, useful filler my boyfriend calls it, but to me it's filler just the same. There are separate horror stories within the horror story, each one on its own could be told as a novella, or a short piece. And the final climactic apocalypse of the town at the end (spoiler alert) is well written but bloody long! By its end you find yourself weary of death and destruction and devastation (the three d's).
Is it the writing style that hooked me and reeled me in? Possibly. It definitely played a part. I've always been in awe of the author. He has a God given gift of being able to combine beautiful, extensive vocabulary with short succinct sentences and powerful use of imagery that leaves me spellbound.
I remember his use of the term 'gunmetal gray' once when describing a sky and now you find it in every other cheap thriller novel you come across. However, I was pleasantly surprised when rereading this to see that it was less his use of short sentences that impressed me, actually he had a fair few sentences of epic length, with brackets and commas and all manner of punctuation thrown in to keep them rolling along. No it was his use of pace that really stood out, the long and short sentence structures fell into a free flowing stream of words that I found addictive and easy to swallow.
The real grab though was in the characters and their stories, the woman who marries a man that is an echo of her father, the man bent on revenge who feels guilt when he doesn't deserve it. The unrequited lover who still carries a torch where his heart burns like January embers. Or the custodian, confined to a life of poverty pain and memory, largely because of his roots and the colour of his skin.
I related to these characters, I felt their journeys and empathised with them. And as their stories wound together I joined right in with them. I shared in their joy and sorrow. I felt their fear and heartache. Their stories were so well told that I found myself believing in every single one, no matter how far fetched it was.
Having finished it this morning, with a real pang of pain in my chest I know now what lies at the heart of my deep obsession with this story.
Have you ever had a moment in your life where you stop, look around you and right in that second, you realise that it will never happen to you again?
When I have those moments, which I have done over the years, I can remember a feeling of salvation, because I live and love that moment, safe in the knowledge that it won't be repeated so I need to make the best of it.
But it's mixed with sadness, especially once the moment is over, because all that will be left is a memory and as my mind ages, my memory will fade.
That is the essence of this novel, the lesson it's ultimately trying to teach you, enjoy those moments and live them while you can, because once they are done, no matter how strong they are and how much they sit in your memory they, like most things in life, will start to fade.
This message is spectacularly captured in a scene towards the end of the book. A scene where seven children form a circle, holding hands dripping with blood from where they have sliced their own palms (these days its known as a blood pact and frankly its dangerous for so many reasons - not something that kids or anyone should do). They stand huddled together on the grass by a stream as the sun starts to dither in the west. One of the children recalls the moment as he's living it. He calls to mind the whippoorwill nearby and feels like flying with it.
Deep down, as the group's leader he savours every second of that circle, when it breaks and the children finally part ways he is the last to leave. He even waits, watching the sun set and the stars appear in the sky because in his heart he knows it is the last time he will have been with all 6 of his best friends, the last time they will have been a lucky 7.
I've bookmarked that passage. Because it is right there, if I have to go back, if I chose to let nostalgia have its way with me, it's there I will look to.
I am clear and certain now, that it was that same feeling I had myself when watching the film adaptation on the big screen. I cried when watching it with my boyfriend because I knew, it would be the last new experience of this story. I was slightly wrong there. There is so much of the book I didn't remember that it has felt like a new and yet oddly familiar experience reading it in my forties.
I cried my eyes out when I watched it with my best friend (who couldn't understand what I was crying for). I cried that time because sitting next to her, that feeling of knowing an ending was the very same feeling I got when I first asked to stay at hers, that very first night I had walked away from a 22 year old relationship.
All that feeling of ending, knowing it was over was too much pain to keep bottled in.
But I cried the most when I watched it with my seventeen year old son. I cried because he'd seen the first half with me three years earlier. Yes I let him go in when he was only 14 and I don't regret my decision to share it with him.
After all, my uncle and parents shared the book with me when I was two years younger than that.
So having my son sitting there next to me watching the film culminate in a bitter sweet ending, knowing that he was practically an adult, that his years of depending on mummy were over and seeing the young man he'd become meant one thing: this would probably be the last time he'd go to the pictures with his mother.
So I cried, actually more like bawlled. The same way I cried when I saw him onto his bus home before going to get mine in another direction. The same way I'm crying my eyes out now as I'm sat typing this at half 9 on a Sunday morning while the rest of the world sleeps.
It's good crying though, it's a release, tears that while full of sadness at the thought of letting go, are eased by the following thought of what life is all about, moving, letting go, it's all perfectly natural and in a wonderfully comforting way these tears are a symbol that I am human, with feelings as well as thoughts. Right now I feel at peace, sad but contented at the same time.
That is how It leaves you, lamenting but perfectly at ease with it. And that is why it has had such a profound affect on me, because I can not only enjoy it, but I can wholly understand that feeling.
It's grief, this book teaches you about grief, and I'm thankful for it. Because I sincerely believe that it has helped me to cope with letting go.
The end.
On a side note, having just spoken to my son, I was reminded that It Chapter 2 was not our last venture to the cinema together. We went to see another emotional mother son movie 3 months later. Clearly my forgetting that, or rather, that it happened afterwards is fairly ironic!
