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The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon : A Novel
by Stephen King
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Scribner (1999-04-06)
ISBN: 0684867621
EAN: 9780684867625
Dewy Decimal #: 813.54
Hardcover: 224 pages
Release Date: 1999-04-06
SKU: CH4028
Condition: Collectible: Very Go
Comments: First edition hardback with dustjacket in great condition from non-smoking home
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
What if the woods were full of them? And of course they were, the woods were full of everything you didn't like, everything you were afraid of and instinctively loathed, everything that tried to overwhelm you with nasty, no-brain panic.The brochure promised a "moderate-to-difficult" six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, where nine-year-old Trisha McFarland was to spend Saturday with her older brother, Pete, and her recently divorced mother. When she wanders off to escape their constant bickering, then tries to catch up by attempting a shortcut through the woods, Trisha strays deeper into a wilderness full of peril and terror. Especially when night falls. Trisha has only her wits for navigation, only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fear. For solace she tunes her Walkman to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox games and the gritty performances of her hero, number 36, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when her radio's reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is with her -- her key to surviving an enemy known only by the slaughtered animals and mangled trees in its wake. A classic story that engages our emotions at the most primal level, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon explores our deep dread of the unknown and the extent to which faith can conquer it. It is a fairy tale grimmer than Grimm, but aglow with a girl's indomitable spirit.
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Amazon.com Review
Trisha McFarland is a plucky 9-year-old hiking with her brother and mom, who is grimly determined to give the kids a good time on their weekends together. Trisha's mom is recently divorced, and her brother is feuding with her for moving from Boston to small-town Maine, where classmates razz him. Trisha steps off the trail for a pee and a respite from the bickering. And gets lost. Trisha's odyssey succeeds on several levels. King renders her consciousness of increasing peril beautifully, from the "first minnowy flutter of disquiet" in her guts to her into-the-wild tumbles to her descent into hallucinations, the nicest being her beloved Red Sox baseball pitcher Tom Gordon, whose exploits she listens to on her Walkman. The nature writing is accurate, tense, and sometimes lyrical, from the maddening whine of the no-see-um mosquito to the profound obbligato of the "Subaudible" (Trisha's dad's term for nature's intimations of God). Our identification with Trisha deepens as we learn about her loved ones: Dad, a dreamboat whose beer habit could sink him; loving but stubborn Mom; Trisha's best pal, Pepsi Robichaud, vividly evoked by her colorful sayings ("Don't go all GIRLY on me, McFarland!"). The personal associations triggered by a full moon, the running monologue with which she stays sane--we who have been lost in woods will recognize these things. In King's revealing Amazon.com interview, he said the one book he wishes he'd written was Lord of the Flies. When Trisha confronts a vision of buzzing horror in the middle of the woods, King creates his strongest echo yet of the central passage of Golding's novel. --Tim Appelo
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Customer Reviews
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Awesome story.
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-11-12
I don't always like Stephen King (he's a superb storyteller, but many of his endings just kill me), but I LOVED this book. It is such a remarkable story about a journey into strength and survival of a young girl that gets lost in the woods. It is a really remarkable story.
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good place to buy from
Rating  (5)
Date: 2008-10-06
I received the book I ordered in a very timely manner, and it is a beautiful copy
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dissapointing is an understatement
Rating  (1)
Date: 2008-09-10
0 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
i have found nothing but praise for this book in the reviews i sought out after wasting my time finishing this book, looking forward to reading common discontent views on this, the biggest let down i have read in some time from an author i had grown to appreciate. have read in other reviews about the suspense created in this book and was thrown back at others' mention of horror! this is not horror to put it plain and to the point. this book is about a lost (and very exaggerated) nine year old walking through the woods near canada somewhere. that is it. so she just keeps walking, of course stumbling in and through to the very poor to life threatening natural conditions which are obvious, expected and unremarkable as a whole. several times it seems as though King forgets that this girl is nine as he writes her, based on my comparison to my nine year old daughter and the girlfriends she has stay over. initially i am under the notion that this is going to be a 'bug horror' type story when trisha is accosted by several winged insects at the beginning of her journey. that passes as she makes her way into a swamp where you would think there is going to be a peak of an overwhelming infestation but instead is where the insect theory is stunted by decreasing mention of that particular problem. the 'creature' that follows her loosely through the story is sparsely mentioned at all and when King actually bothers, the lack of details is discouraging and vague, not the suspense creating vague either, the 'should i even make note of that' vague. i about threw the book across the room on page 170 (which i bookmarked after overcoming that urge) where the chapter closes up with the bold statement that pretty much nothing of interest is in this books near future and there is no distant future when you are over two thirds of your way through the book. i have not reviewed books before being inspired by this book to take time to vent about my discontent with this book. i honestly am not a nay-sayer by any means and really am normally pretty happy just being able to have time to read anything. perhaps i simply expected more from this book because it was written by king and i had great previous experiences reading his larger novels.
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well written as usual, just not very substantial
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-06-22
At this point it is a cliche to state that Stephen King could make a best seller out of a grocery list. And while that term is used mostly as a derogatory statement, I feel it also implies that King has found his stride as a popular author to the point where he could actually make a page turner out of a shopping list. The man certainly has an innate sense of pacing and plot timing.
THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON gets right to it, with the protagonist getting lost in the woods right at the start. the point of view of a 9 year old girl is told believably, and king doesn't resort to making his child protagonist some gosh-gee innocent at the mercy of the woods. She's actually quite resourceful, but never to the point of feeling implausible; King found a satisfying middle-ground. What feels a little less satisfying was the ending. It was not all that dramatic, after 200 pages of something lurking in the woods, especially for a book that keeps bringing up Tom Gordon's being a 'closer'. Mr. King needs to work on his own closing skills, methinks.
Some readers may find the book to be scary, but I think it's pretty tame, although I suspect it wasn't King's intention to make a flat-out horror story, anyway. Rather, it is part harrowing survival story, part contemplation on faith. The survival elements push the plot along briskly and with the collective force of an author in his prime; the spiritual elements, however, may not be King's forte. King has delt with the intervention of the divine before (The Stand, Desperation, etc.), but having the little girl becoming more and more detached from reality through sickness and weariness, King stays ambiguous as to whether or not the divine really is intervening to help the girl, or whether her belief in something is ,in itself, what helps her to persevere. This is all well and good, However the ambiguity was compromised by the inclusion a certain plot device. Without spoiling anything, the girl's knowledge of a certain object days before she gets to it seems to make it very obvious that there is no ambiguity by the end. What could have been something that each reader could have subjectively taken differenty is instead spelled right out, which undermines some of the point. I have zero problem with books that deal with the Divine, but I thought King set out to deliberately confuse what is real and not by making his protagonist venturing on an aboriginal 'vision quest', however, he does not keep it that way and spoils the signifigance of a 'what is true' story with facts that point the way.
The book is a short read, and will probably take most readers no more than a couple days to get through. It's length is appropriate to tell the story, but there isn't a whole lot of substance to it. It sort of feels like it took King only a little longer to write then it does for the audience to read. I don't mean to bash mr. King, but I'm just comparing it to his earlier works, and like THE COLORADO KID he seems to be making a short, brief, and quaint book that is neither at the top of his literary peaks, nor his horror best.
recommended if you wawnt something light to read on a trip, or a page-turner while on vacation. I suspect the story won't stick with you long after you've finished it.
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Page Turner!
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-06-01
Once again Stephen King has come through for us! This book was a real page turner. It was very rich in details and suspense.
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