Are you afraid of clowns? It took me a long time to get to Stephen King's novel "It", reading the author's works in chronological order of their writing and publication. By the time I got my hands on the book of the master of horror with the famous red ball on the cover and the mysterious inscription: "It", of course I already knew about the story about Pennywise the clown from the old 1990 film adaptation. I saw the film quite a long time ago, but for some reason I had the feeling that cinema does not convey all the fear and does not inspire horror with its main antagonist, as he will do on the pages of King's work. And I was not mistaken. The book completely absorbed me, and each subsequent chapter of the novel made me more and more horrified. Immediately I would like to note that the work is very large. And this, in my opinion, is quite a significant disadvantage. King is known for his stringy texts (at least for me) that immerse the reader in all the details of the imagined world. This often makes reading even dull and boring. This moment is also present in "It". However, the story itself swings gradually, introducing us to two time lines at once. And this, in my opinion, is a fairly successful move by the author. I've noticed for a long time that King is still a fan of nostalgia. Many of his works take place in the years when he was a child himself. The writer perfectly conveys the era, and, more importantly, the children's experiences of the guys. There are several boys and one girl in the book who encounter a dangerous clown. All these children are perfectly revealed, and in each of them at some point you can recognize yourself, once you were worried about the problems described in the work. They seemed like something very important. Of course, as time goes on, you realize that back then everything was easier. But this is the law of life — it is never simple, and for every age, for every person, there are difficulties and problems that only he can survive. Stephen King masterfully shows how one loss brings similar children closer together, who are trying to survive the problems that have befallen them. Each of them has problems with their family and peers. This is what unites them. An encounter with a terrifying clown will forever leave trauma and horror in their subconscious. And even after more than twenty years, children who have already grown up will have to unite again to take on a new fight. And King will show that despite the significant time that has passed since childhood, the old psychological wounds of the guys have not gone away, they have become their companions, turned them into who they are at the time of reunification. I like how the author shows the essence of a scary clown. Pennywise is a kind of evil personification here, but he himself scares the characters most of the time using various tricks and methods. King describes what is happening so competently and puts his characters in scary situations that by the end you realize that the true nightmare is not caused by the clown himself, but rather by the children's fears of the guys, which transform into something that truly terrifies each individual person. We all have something similar. Something that is our most terrifying ordeal. Stephen successfully puts all this on paper, showing the reader that he knows about our fears, he feels them himself, he shares them with us through this work. "It" is without a doubt one of Stephen King's best novels. This is an interesting work with its own mythology. Here the author has perfectly shown us a whole world of horror, which penetrates deeper into the reader's consciousness with each page. Let the final come out somewhat ambiguous and was perceived by everyone in different ways. King achieved the main thing. He sent us back to childhood, forcing us, along with the main characters, to remember all our fears and understand that they are always with us. 10 out of 10