“Why does this book remind me of Stephen King’s IT?
1. Death
They both are about death or evil forces that kill.
2. The Tone is More Interesting Than The Plot
The plot of IT ends up being less interesting that the setting and that feeling of old-timey U.S. suburban life. The tone of Shadow Life is slow and thoughtful, and the plot is a little less interesting than the portrait of the character’s life.
3. Perhaps Needless Sexuality?
IT has a scene that you can google for yourself. Shadow Life gives us a bisexual character, who was apparently with a woman before she was with her husband. It’s kind of tossed off, which is fine, but I think if I found out my mom was with a woman before she was with my dad, I’d have a few questions and curiosities. Not because I’m reprimanding my mom, because I’m curious about her life and who she is as a person, and if she had a romantic relationship with a woman, if that’s part of who she is, that matters to me. Where in the book, the mom is kind of like, “What do you want, sexual details?” and the adult child is like, “Ew, no.” I mean, I think I’d be like, “Well, no, of course I don’t want a Dear Penthouse Forum version. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine. I’m just curious about you. You’re my mom, and up to now I had no idea about this important facet of your identity, so it’s something that I’d like to hear more about sometime, but I’ll let you take the lead on that.”
I don’t need the main character to wear rainbow sweaters or whatever, I think I just feel like…you, the comic, brought up sexuality, so why bring it up if you don’t want to talk about it? The former flame serves the story identically to a close friend, so, I don’t know, it just seems like an important part of a book where the other highs are things like buying a vacuum and losing your wallet at the library.
4. The Spider
Both stories have giant scary spiders as the ultimate manifestation of the villain. I don’t know that spiders are necessarily a recurring theme in either story, just creepy, I guess.
I didn’t expect this to have much in common with IT. And yet, here we are.”