It Grows on You

"It Grows on You" is a short story by American writer Stephen King, originally published in Marshroots in 1973. It was nominated for the 1983 Locus Award for "Best Short Story".^[1]

The story recounts bizarre and inexplicable events that have taken place in a notorious house in the town of Castle Rock, Maine. The house seems to take on a life of its own as new wings are added, growing in a way that seems proportionate to the awful events that occurred there. The new wings added seem to be connected to the deaths of men who, as boys, were molested by the house owner's wife.

King wrote "It Grows on You" in 1973. It was influenced by Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and the works of Davis Grubb such as "Where the Woodbine Twineth". King sought to "capture that world of dirt roads, abandoned houses, and general stores full of old men, old baked bean supper posters, and old flypaper" and to depict "...a house that would grow every time some old campaigner in the town kicked the bucket [...] a kind of rambling New England memorial that was half-crypt, half living organism."^[1]

"It Grows on You" was originally published in volume three, number one of the University of Maine publication Marshroots in autumn 1973.^[1] In August 1982, a revised version was published in Whispers;^[1] this version was nominated for the Locus Award for "Best Short Story" in 1983 .^[1][2] In 1992, it was included in the anthology Death edited by Stuart Schiff.^[3] In October 1993, a further revised version was collected in King's book Nightmares & Dreamscapes.^[1][3] In the notes to Nightmares & Dreamscapes, King suggested that "It Grows on You" could serve as a sequel to his 1991 work Needful Things, which is also set in Castle Rock.^[2]

• Castle Rock (Stephen King)
• Needful Things
• Stephen King short fiction bibliography

• "It Grows on You" at StephenKing.com
• It Grows on You title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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