LOSING MY STEPHEN KING VIRGINITY: The Institute.

Starting with an apology - the title of this post is not 100% honest. Stephen King films have always held quite a high up spot in my film rankings, however this is the first novel of King's that I have read. So really this is me losing my Stephen King literary virginity, but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

The Institute is a book I picked up on a complete whim, grabbed randomly from the 'buy one get one half price' table at Waterstones when it was legal to go shopping. Fantasy and horror are not genres I've really delved into in terms of reading. As I said, IT and The Shining are two of my most-loved films, but I've never seen the appeal of reading something that is meant to scare you or blow your mind as I did not understand how the shock factor could translate onto the page.

Boy, was I wrong.

The Institute tells us the story of a child-genius who is kidnapped and held hostage in pretty much a school for kids with magical mental powers. Think of the type of children you see on 'Are you smarter than a 10 year old?' and shows like that, but with the addition of either telepathy or telekinesis. This 'school' of sorts does all kinds of horribly intrusive bodily tests on these children to stretch and challenge their powers to prepare for some sort of intellectual war or battle. King does a brilliant job of putting you in the shoes of these children, emulating this horrible, non-consensual invasion of privacy that nobody deserves to endure. The children are not only going through this, but are simultaneously suffering insane homesickness, missing their family, friends and school without any idea of whether any of these are okay or the same anymore. King does not forget this childhood element, perfectly capturing the voice of a young boy who, aside from any telepathic powers or horrific trauma he is currently going through, has been taken away from home and really misses his family and playing video-games and chess with his friend.

The Institute is a book about escape and how if you really are desperate to get out, you can, particularly if you have magical mental abilities which for sure help. Despite what I initially thought, this book is incredibly scary! I find the horror element of King's work quite difficult to assess. Like with IT, at the heart of this story we find childhood and friendship and first love. Not only are we seeing things from the perspective of a child, but the entire storyline is about a horrible organisation that manipulates and takes advantage of children, locking them up together and tearing them apart in ways unimaginable. In essence, we get to see the beautiful and raw parts of young coming of age stories in amongst a whole lot of trauma and horror. This is what King is clearly so good at though, and is something that makes this book so magical, even more so than the magical powers themselves.

That being said, the traumatic horror in this story is REAL, in every sense of the word. Without giving spoilers, when the higher-up motives behind this institute are revealed the story becomes so disturbingly conceivable. We've seen from films like Split and the insane real-life stories that inspired it that our mind is much stronger than we would imagine, so despite the fantasy around it, the powers these children have aren't too fantastical and inconceivable. Knowing the governments running today's society and the amount of hidden information and areas of land, the manipulation and disguised, hush-hush trauma they are inflicting on these children is even more imaginable in the real world. Think Black Mirror - such horrific, terrifying occurrences that really do not feel that surreal or far away from reality. That is the true horror of The Institute: no killer clowns or possessed hotels, simply terrible, disgusting authority programmes and decisions that do not feel too dissimilar to our own reality.

On a more technical note, this book has the perfect, gripping structure. We start by following an entirely different character narrative and timeline which is something I always love in a novel. It makes me even more determined to finish a book - I have to see how and when these timelines end up crossing over. It is this crossover that brings us to this insane climax of the book. The novel is structured like a crescendo, building up and up until a mind-blowing, extensive action scene that you can really feel the visuals of thanks to King's storytelling abilities. Obviously I'd always love for a Stephen King book to be turned into a film, but this climax of a scene is one that fills me with excitement just thinking about how Andrés Muschietti could or how Stanley Kubrick would have directed it.

The Institute is a book I would literally recommend to anyone of any age and any taste in literature. Though absolutely terrifying, the childhood nature of this story makes it an ideal YA read with added fantasy and magic. In the same breath, the horrible trauma and disturbing side of it makes it a gripping read for a horror or sci-fi lover, giving them heaps of mind-blowing content to properly get their teeth into. For me, a sucker for a YA but with an on-screen soft-spot for horror and fantasy, this book by Stephen King was pretty much perfect. I will say that approaching the final chapters the fantasy was *verging on* cringe for me, but I think that is partly due to this being my first step into this side of literature, and if this had been visual in a film I am sure my eyes would have been glued to the screen. Entering a new genre is scary and the critic in me is always going to find something to have an issue with. Regardless, I wholeheartedly adored reading this novel and there is no way I am letting this be the first and last Stephen King book I read. After The Institute I am so ready to dive head first into the world of Stephen King and don't think there is any turning back now.

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