It, by Stephen King. Finally finished it, just in time to see the new movie (which wasn't very good)!
The book had me well enough for about...500 pages or so. It was overwritten but a lot of the information King provided on the town of Derry was interesting enough for me to stick with it. Then I realized around 600 pages in that I was less and less interested in what was happening and it was getting harder to get motivated to read more. There simply wasn't enough happening with the story, and too many diversions that weren't necessary.
The story is basically a mash-up of HP Lovecraft and Peyton's Place - the small town is rotten to the core because of a interdimensional psychic monster that lives underneath it. For reasons that I don't think were ever adequately explained, the monster seems to prefer the shape of a clown, but the main thing is that it takes the form of a person's greatest fear before closing in for the kill, so a little 1950s kid who was really scared of the Creature From the Black Lagoon will be mutilated by a living, full-color version of the Creature coming out of the river. There's some other stuff about It being opposed by a giant space turtle that might or might not be helping the seven main characters come together to defeat It - King isn't so much influenced by Lovecraft as by August Derleth's more Manichean take on Lovecraft.
When the book is focused on its characters or the town's history, it's generally at its strongest. The more cosmic it gets, the weaker it gets, and then there's the usual issue I have with King's writing in that when he really reaches for the big melodramatic moments, he usually falls on his face and comes up with something unintentionally funny (e.g., Bill trying to rally Stan by yelling "YOU'VE GOT YOUR BUH-BUH-BUH-BIRDS!!!"). The alternating child/adult settings also wreck most of the suspense because you already know who's living or dying and it's really just a matter to waiting (a long...long time) to see how things play out. Related to that, I get the impression that King, in killing adult Stan relatively early on, always seemed to forget that Stan was still present in the childhood parts. Every few chapters, he'll have Stan briefly say something ("Oh, shit, I forgot about Stan again!") and then get back to the more involving dialogue among the six core heroes.
There's also this really weird bit with the characters finishing their dinner at a Chinese restaurant and King has them all bite directly into their fortune cookies, writing as if that's what everyone eating Chinese food does. I've NEVER met anyone who does that - why would you risk biting into the paper inside? But King had to do a big scene in which they accidentally bite into gross stuff so...
