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The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (Paperback)
by Stephen King
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Horror fiction, Bestsellers, Original books |
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MSL Pointer Review:
"The world had teeth and it could bite you with them at any time." King takes us with him to make a trip through hell. Through the eyes of a young girl, he describes in an excellent way, the fears of a young girl in the woods which makes you feel the really horror of being lost. |
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Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Pocket
Pub. in: February, 2000
ISBN: 0671042858
Pages: 272
Measurements: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00932
Other information: ISBN-13: 9780671042851
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- Awards & Credential -
#1 New York Times Bestseller |
- MSL Picks -
The story of a child lost in the woods has been done before by many authors, but never with this much depth and bite to it. In The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Trisha McFarlane isn't just dealing with how to build a fire or find berries to eat, she must struggle to maintain her sanity and deal with the knowledge that something is stalking her. Although the story is very simple, it goes directly for the throat of the reader. The powerful characterization of that little girl creates a deeply rooted involvement. It is as though the reader can feel the pain Trisha has to go through.
The story is set in motion by a family hiking trip, during which Trisha's brother and mother constantly squabble about the mother's divorce, as well as other topics. Trisha falls back to avoid listening and is therefore unable to find her family again after she wanders off the trail to take a bathroom break. She starts walking in the direction she thinks they went, but takes a wrong turn and ends up hopelessly lost, heading deeper into the heart of the forest. She is left with a bottle of water, four Twinkies, a boiled egg, a sandwich, a large bottle of Surge, a poncho, and her Walkman to survive. Now and then she listens to her Walkman to keep her mood up, either to learn of news of the search for her, or to listen to baseball games featuring her favorite player, and "heartthrob," Tom Gordon.
As she starts to take steps to survive by conserving what little food she has with her, and consuming edible flora such as birch nuts, checker berries, and fiddleheads; her mother and brother return to their car without her and call the police and start a search. Naturally, the rescuers search in the area around the path, but not as far away as she has gone. The girl decides to follow a creek, rationalizing that all bodies of water lead to a source and eventually civilization. As the cops stop searching for the night, she huddles up underneath a tree to rest. Eventually, a combination of fear, hunger, and thirst causes Trisha to hallucinate. She imagines several people from her life, as well as her hero, Tom Gordon, appearing to her. Author Stephen King purposely makes it unclear whether increasingly obvious signs of a monster in the woods are also hallucinations.
Hours and soon days begin to pass, with Trisha wandering further into the woods. Eventually she begins to believe that she is headed for a confrontation with the God of the Lost, a wasp-faced, evil entity who is hunting her down. Her trial becomes a test of a very young girl's ability to maintain sanity in the face of seemingly certain death. Eventually she comes upon a road, but just as she discovers signs of civilization, she is confronted by a bear - which she interprets as the God of the Lost in disguise. She attempts to fend the bear off by pitching her Walkman at it, but is rescued by a hunter.
There are plenty of the traditional elements to a "child lost in the woods" story; obviously Tina is going to have to find food, water, and a way back to humanity, but it is the psychological and horror elements that make the story soar. Tina's growing detachment with reality is perfectly depicted, as is her growing knowledge that not only is there a creature stalking her but it is no creature known to man. Unlike King's big, supernatural extravaganzas, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon doesn’t dwell on unseen forces of evil arrayed against the protagonist - rather, they are cleverly crafted personal dramas, where the evil to be found may only exist in the mind of the lead character. King also uses a rather unique device to structure this novel. Keeping with the baseball theme, he names chapters by inning (i.e. "Top of the Seventh") rather than number, with the obvious metaphor being that if McFarland is to be rescued, she will need a "save" in the late "innings" by her favorite pitcher.
A good story well told.
Target readers:
General readers
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Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947. After his parents separated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. Parts of his childhood were spent in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where his father's family was at the time, and in Stratford, Connecticut. When Stephen was eleven, his mother brought her children back to Durham, Maine, for good. Her parents, Guy and Nellie Pillsbury, had become incapacitated with old age, and Ruth King was persuaded by her sisters to take over the physical care of the elderly couple. Other family members provided a small house in Durham and financial support. After Stephen's grandparents passed away, Mrs. King found work in the kitchens of Pineland, a nearby residential facility for the mentally challenged.
Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. From his sophomore year at the University of Maine at Orono, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, The Maine Campus. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate. He came to support the anti-war movement on the Orono campus, arriving at his stance from a conservative view that the war in Vietnam was unconstitutional. He graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, with a B.A. in English and qualified to teach on the high school level. A draft board examination immediately post-graduation found him 4-F on grounds of high blood pressure, limited vision, flat feet, and punctured eardrums.
Stephen made his first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. Throughout the early years of his marriage, he continued to sell stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.
In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy, the public high school in Hampden, Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels.
In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. On Mother's Day of that year, Stephen learned from his new editor at Doubleday, Bill Thompson, that a major paperback sale would provide him with the means to leave teaching and write full-time.
At the end of the summer of 1973, the Kings moved their growing family to southern Maine because of Stephen's mother's failing health. Renting a summer home on Sebago Lake in North Windham for the winter, Stephen wrote his next-published novel, originally titled Second Coming and then Jerusalem's Lot, before it became 'Salem's Lot, in a small room in the garage. During this period, Stephen's mother died of cancer, at the age of 59.
Carrie was published in the spring of 1974. That same fall, the Kings left Maine for Boulder, Colorado. They lived there for a little less than a year, during which Stephen wrote The Shining, set in Colorado. Returning to Maine in the summer of 1975, the Kings purchased a home in the Lakes Region of western Maine. At that house, Stephen finished writing The Stand, much of which also is set in Boulder. The Dead Zone was also written in Bridgton.
In 1977, the Kings spent three months of a projected year- long stay in England, cut the sojourn short and returned home in mid-December, purchasing a new home in Center Lovell, Maine. After living there one summer, the Kings moved north to Orrington, near Bangor, so that Stephen could teach creative writing at the University of Maine at Orono. The Kings returned to Center Lovell in the spring of 1979. In 1980, the Kings purchased a second home in Bangor, retaining the Center Lovell house as a summer home.
Because their children have become adults, Stephen and Tabitha now spend winters in Florida and the remainder of the year at their Bangor and Center Lovell homes.
He has put some of his college dramatic society experience to use doing cameos in several of the film adaptations of his works as well as a bit part in a George Romero picture, Knightriders. Joe Hill King also appeared in Creepshow, which was released in 1982. Stephen made his directorial debut, as well as writing the screenplay, for the movie Maximum Overdrive (an adaptation of his short story "Trucks") in 1985.
Stephen is the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
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Set in New England, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is the gripping tale of nine-year-old Trisha, who wanders off the beaten path of the Appalachian Trail to escape the bickering of her family. When she tries to catch up to them, Trisha strays deeper into a wilderness which, in the hands of America's most frightening writer, becomes a place of primordial terror. Especially when night fails. 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, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when her radio's batteries die, Trisha begins to imagine that Tom Gordon is with her - her key to surviving an enemy known only by the slaughtered animals and mangled trees it leaves in its wake. A classic story that engages our emotions at the most primal level, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon explores our deepest fears of the unknown and the extent to which faith can conquer them. It is a fairy tale grimmer than Grimm but aglow with a girl's indomitable spirit.
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First Inning
Mom and Pete gave it a rest as they got their packs and Quilla's wicker plant-collection basket out of the van's back end; Pete even helped Trisha get her pack settled evenly on her back, tightening one of the straps, and she had a moment's foolish hope that now things were going to be all right.
"Kids got your ponchos?" Mom asked, looking up at the sky. There was still blue up there, but the clouds were thickening in the west. It very likely would rain, but probably not soon enough for Pete to have a satisfying whine about being soaked.
"I've got mine, Mom!" Trisha chirruped in her oh-boy-waterless-cookware voice.
Pete grunted something that might have been yes.
"Lunches?"
Affirmative from Trisha; another low grunt from Pete.
"Good, because I'm not sharing mine." She locked the Caravan, then led them across the dirt lot toward a sign marked Trail West, with an arrow beneath. There were maybe a dozen other cars in the lot, all but theirs with out-of-state plates.
"Bug-spray?" Mom asked as they stepped onto the path leading to the trail. "Trish?"
"Got it!" she chirruped, not entirely positive she did but not wanting to stop with her back turned so that Mom could have a rummage. That would get Pete going again for sure. If they kept walking, though, he might see something which would interest him, or at least distract him. A raccoon. Maybe a deer. A dinosaur would be good. Trisha giggled.
"What's funny?" Mom asked.
"Just me thinks," Trisha replied, and Quilla frowned - "me thinks" was a Larry McFarland-ism. Well let her frown, Trisha thought. Let her frown all she wants, I'm with her, and I don't complain about it like old grouchy there, but he's still my Dad and I still love him.
Trisha touched the brim of her signed cap, as if to prove it.
"Okay, kids, let's go," Quilla said. "And keep your eyes open."
"I hate this," Pete almost groaned - it was the first clearly articulated thing he'd said since they got out of the van, and Trisha thought: Please God, send something. A deer or a dinosaur or a UFO. Because if you don't, they're going right back at it.
God sent nothing but a few mosquito scouts that would no doubt soon be reporting back to the main army that fresh meat was on the move, and by the time they passed a sign reading NO. CONWAY STATION 5.5 MI., the two of them were at it full-bore again, ignoring the woods, ignoring her, ignoring everything but each other. Yatata-yatata-yatata. It was, Trisha thought, like some sick kind of making out.
It was a shame, too, because they were missing stuff that was actually pretty neat. The sweet, resiny smell of the pines, for instance, and the way the clouds seemed so close -- less like clouds than like draggles of whitish-gray smoke. She guessed you'd have to be an adult to call something as boring as walking one of your hobbies, but this really wasn't bad. She didn't know if the entire Appalachian Trail was as well-maintained as this - probably not - but if it was, she guessed she could understand why people with nothing better to do decided to walk all umpty-thousand miles of it. Trisha thought it was like walking on a broad, winding avenue through the woods. It wasn't paved, of course, and it ran steadily uphill, but it was easy enough walking. There was even a little hut with a pump inside it and a sign which read: Water Tests Ok For Drinking. Please Fill Primer Jug For Next Person.
She had a bottle of water in her pack - a big one with a squeeze-top - but suddenly all Trisha wanted in the world was to prime the pump in the little hut and get a drink, cold and fresh, from its rusty lip. She would drink and pretend she was Bilbo Baggins, on his way to the Misty Mountains.
"Mom?" she asked from behind them. "Could we stop long enough to - "
"Making friends is a job, Peter," her mother was saying. She didn't look back at Trisha. "You can't just stand around and wait for kids to come to you."
"Mom? Pete? Could we Please stop for just a - "
"You don't understand," he said heatedly. "You don't have a clue. I don't know how things were when you were in junior high, but they're a lot different now."
"Pete? Mom? Mommy? There's a pump - " Actually there was a pump; that was now the grammatically correct way to put it, because the pump was behind them, and getting farther behind all the time.
"I don't accept that," Mom said briskly, all business, and Trisha thought: No wonder she drives him crazy. Then, resentfully: They don't even know I'm here, The Invisible Girl, that's me. I might as well have stayed home. A mosquito whined in her ear and she slapped at it irritably.
They came to a fork in the trail. The main branch - not quite as wide as an avenue now, but still not bad -- went off to the left, marked by a sign reading NO. CONWAY 5.2. The other branch, smaller and mostly overgrown, read KEZAR NOTCH 10.
"Guys, I have to pee," said The Invisible Girl, and of course neither of them took any notice; they just headed up the branch which led to North Conway, walking side by side like lovers and looking into each other's faces like lovers and arguing like the bitterest enemies. We should have stayed home, Trisha thought. They could have done this at home, and I could have read a book. The Hobbit again, maybe - a story about guys who like to walk in the woods.
"Who cares, I'm peeing," she said sulkily, and walked a little way down the path marked KEZAR NOTCH. Here the pines which had stayed modestly back from the main trail crowded in, reaching with their blueblack branches, and there was underbrush, as well - clogs and clogs of it. She looked for the shiny leaves that meant poison ivy, poison oak, or poison sumac, and didn't see any... thank God for small favors. Her mother had shown her pictures of those and taught her to identify them two years ago, when life had been happier and simpler. In those days Trisha had gone tramping in the woods with her mother quite a bit. (Pete's bitterest complaint about the trip to Plant-A-Torium was that their mother had wanted to go there. The obvious truth of this seemed to blind him to how selfish he had sounded, harping on it all day long.)
On one of their walks, Mom had also taught her how girls peed in the woods. She began by saying, "The most important thing - maybe the only important thing - is not to do it in a patch of poison ivy. Now look. Watch me and do it just the way I do it."
Trisha now looked both ways, saw no one, and decided she'd get off the trail anyway. The way to Kezar Notch looked hardly used - little more than an alley compared to the broad thoroughfare of the main trail - but she still didn't want to squat right in the middle of it. It seemed indecorous.
She stepped off the path in the direction of the North Conway fork, and she could still hear them arguing. Later on, after she was good and lost and trying not to believe she might die in the woods, Trisha would remember the last phrase she got in the clear; her brother's hurt, indignant voice: - don't know why we have to pay for what you guys did wrong!
She walked half a dozen steps toward the sound of his voice, stepping carefully around a clump of brambles even though she was wearing jeans instead of shorts. She paused, looked back, and realized she could still see the Kezar Notch path... which meant that anyone coming along it would be able to see her, squatting and peeing with a half-loaded knapsack on her back and a Red Sox cap on her head. Em-bare-ASS-ing, as Pepsi might say (Quilla Andersen had once remarked that Penelope Robichaud's picture should be next to the word vulgar in the dictionary).
Trisha went down a mild slope, her sneakers slipping a little in a carpet of last year's dead leaves, and when she got to the bottom she couldn't see the Kezar Notch path anymore. Good. From the other direction, straight ahead through the woods, she heard a man's voice and a girl's answering laughter - hikers on the main trail, and not far away, by the sound. As Trisha unsnapped her jeans it occurred to her that if her mother and brother paused in their oh-so-interesting argument, looking behind them to see how sis was doing, and saw a strange man and woman instead, they might be worried about her.
Good! Give them something else to think about for a few minutes. Something besides themselves.
The trick, her mother had told her on that better day in the woods two years ago, wasn't going outdoors - girls could do that every bit as well as boys - but to do it without soaking your clothes.
Trisha held onto the conveniently jutting branch of a nearby pine, bent her knees, then reached between her legs with her free hand, yanking her pants and her underwear forward and out of the firing line. For a moment nothing happened - wasn't that just typical - and Trish sighed. A mosquito whined bloodthirstily around her left ear, and she had no hand free with which to slap at it.
"Oh waterless cookware!" she said angrily, but it was funny, really quite deliciously stupid and funny, and she began to laugh. As soon as she started laughing she started peeing. When she was done she looked around dubiously for something to blot with and decided - once more it was her father's phrase - not to push her luck. She gave her tail a little shake (as if that would really do any good) and then yanked up her pants. When the mosquito buzzed the side of her face again, she slapped it briskly and looked with satisfaction at the small bloody smear in the cup of her palm. "Thought I was unloaded, partner, didn't you?" she said. ...
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View all 15 comments |
A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-02 00:00>
Stephen King, through the mind of a young girl, gives a graphic picture of the terror one might feel alone and lost in the woods. I would think that anyone who enjoyed The Blair Witch Project would find this book appealing, because it fleshes out the feelings and emotions that were only hinted at in that movie. If your idea of a great Stephen King book is The Regulators, then you will probably want to pass on this one, but if you enjoyed his more thoughtful works, such as the recent Bag of Bones, The Stand, etc. then this should be a good read for you. I will admit, I was starting to worry that maybe my favorite author had lost some of his touch, but my faith has been restored. The things that scare us most are the things we create in our own minds, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon chillingly exemplifies that.
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Erik Johnson (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-02 00:00>
This book has revived my faith in Stephen King. After reading Bag of Bones and being bored to death (Well, I only made it through about 150 pages. After reading this I may take another whack at it), I thought King may have lost his touch. I was dead wrong. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon rates up there with The Green Mile, and even comes close to touching what I like to call the "untouchable" "Stand." I read this book in less than 2 days, and during those two days I had several distractions that took me away from the book much longre than I would have liked. It is refreshing to read a King novel that is less than 500 pages long. I went into the book thinking it would be boring (considering the storyline, how exciting could it be?). But, once again I was dead wrong. This was THE most suspenseful novel I have ever read. I was on the edge of my seat through the entire journey. I got to know the character more than I ever got to know any character, movie or book. Thank you, Mr. King... for another great book.
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M. Desoer (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-05 00:00>
Let me start by stating that I am not a died-in-the wool Stephen King fan, and definitely not a horror fan. However, the reviews on this book correctly led me to conclude that it is not a usual King book, and I definitely liked it.
Nine-year-old Trisha strays off the Appalachian Trail as she lags behind her arguing mother and brother, and then becomes hopelessly lost when she tries to take a "shortcut" back to the trail. The suspense and tension in this book are those inherent in a story about a young, but determined child, armed with a very small amount of survivor knowledge. For emotional support, she increasingly imagines that her favorite pitcher, Red Sox's Tom Gordon, accompanies her on her trek and provides her with guidance and support.
This is a wrenching story, as you keep hoping that this poor child will be found, will escape the woods unharmed, and so forth. I found myself saying "NO!" out loud when she made bad decisions, and encouraging her as she plunged ahead.
This is a suspenseful and inspiring story.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-05 00:00>
I teach fiction in Manhattan. My students are very sophisticated, and they will only reluctantly admit they read Stephen King (who absolutely influenced me - I read all his books up until the time I was in 9th Grade). That's too bad. This story is so well told, and King's sense of plot is so muscular that it chugs along even when parts of it don't quite make sense. (It seems unlikely to me, for example, that the novel's protagonist, Trisha, would make the connections and leaps that she does; would a 9-year-old realize, for example, that it was the water that made her sick?) The ending is a bit confusing, thematically. We didn't realize that Trisha identified so strongly with the absent father, so the exclusion of the mother in that final epiphany feels a bit off. But these are minor quibbles. The conflict and character development in this book are so strong that every novellist wannabe should check it out. They'll probably enjoy the trip, too.
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