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The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

3.47 of 5 stars 3.47 · rating details · 56,109 ratings · 1,585 reviews

Nine-year-old Trisha McFarland strays from the path while she and her recently divorced mother and brother take a hike along a branch of the Appalachian Trail. Lost for days, wandering farther and farther astray, Trisha has only her portable radio for comfort. A huge fan of Tom Gordon, a Boston Red Sox relief pitcher, she listens to baseball games and fantasizes that her h...more

Paperback, 264 pages

Published November 1st 2005 by Pocket Books (first published January 1st 1999)

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Sep 07, 2011 Lena Hillbrand rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: see review

Shelves: stephen-king, audiobooks

I very much enjoyed this story about a nine 'but big for her age' year-old girl who gets lost in the Maine wilderness. For the most part. So let's get down to it.

What I liked: The girl who loved baseball. Yep, that pretty much sums up why I loved this book. I mean, how can you not love a nine-year-old who loves baseball, in large part because she shared it with her absent-through-divorce father. And maybe I'm a little biased because I was a kid who loved basketball, and then baseball, and then...more I very much enjoyed this story about a nine 'but big for her age' year-old girl who gets lost in the Maine wilderness. For the most part. So let's get down to it.

What I liked: The girl who loved baseball. Yep, that pretty much sums up why I loved this book. I mean, how can you not love a nine-year-old who loves baseball, in large part because she shared it with her absent-through-divorce father. And maybe I'm a little biased because I was a kid who loved basketball, and then baseball, and then football. Yep, I had favorite players, I could recount their stats. I knew who they pitched against, if they had trademark moves, etc. And for sure I could understand why and how baseball was her link to the world, how she listened to the games for solace and sanity and hope, for escape and, well, everything we love about sports as children or adults. And the girl was tough-as-nails but not unrealistically so. I didn't even mind that she cried ALL the time. I mean, not only was it realistic, but it didn't annoy me how, say, reading YA books about girls crying all the time makes me want to throw the book against the wall. No, when Trisha cried, it fit into the story and didn't make her seem like a spoiled whiny brat (sorry, I have a thing against girls who cry a lot in books). Instead of giving up and feeling sorry for herself, our plucky little heroine gets her resourceful butt up and goes on.

Which, incidentally, brings me to the next part of my review: what I didn't like so much. First of all...I may have read this wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is how it happens. Girl hiking in woods with family. Girl comes to fork in the road, goes off in the MIDDLE to pee, and gets lost. She tries to slant off to one side to catch up with her family on the trail, taking the short cut. Okay, so maybe the trail winds away somewhere and she wouldn't intersect it that way. So what does she do? She keeps walking. FOR NINE DAYS!!!!! Hello, why not just turn around? She's in the middle of a fork. When she realizes she's lost, if she'd turned around and gone back, she'd have to either run into one of the two trails or come back to the intersection. It's geographically not possible that she wouldn't. Draw a picture if you don't believe me. For such a smart, resourceful kid to not think of something so simple...I don't believe it for a minute. Not for a kid who knows what to eat in the woods better than I do, and I'm an adult who happened to grow up, that's right, IN THE WOODS!
The next thing that sort of bothered me was how she got sick from drinking clear pure stream water. That's pretty much a myth. If you drink stream/river water that comes out of a farm where there's runoff from animal dung, maybe. In the middle of a pristine forest? Not so much. I'd buy it if the swamp water, or the puddle water, made her violently ill ie food poisoning, but not the clean water. And the last thing. Yeah, I know, SK points out that this was her first bad decision, to go north towards Canada instead of south when she got to almost civilization. I could see how she'd miss when she was so close. I could see how she didn't hear the town. But who goes north? Come on, she's seen maps, right? She lives in Maine, right? Can anyone name a town north of Maine besides, um, Canada? Can anyone name a town south of Maine? Yeah, that's what I thought. This girl was way too smart to make those mistakes. If she'd been an idiot, I'd buy it. But then, she wouldn't have lived.

So I guess my final word would be this: come on, Mr. King. Don't fall back on the same lame old lost-in-the-woods cliches. Your fans expect more.

Also, like most of King's almost could-happen books, I didn't need the supernatural stuff. It was hokey. There's plenty of horror in real life, plenty of scary situations for a girl lost in the woods. We really don't need wasp-gods to know it's scary. Really. I like King's supernatural books fine, but some of them, I always think, are more plausible (aka scary) without it. Those elements just ruin the spine tingling "this could REALLY happen" vibe and distract/detract from the suspense. Maybe he just adds it bc he thinks the fans like that? I know I don't need it in every book. Not. At. All.

I definitely fell in love with the character in this book, which is one of the things that Stephen King does SO well. I just didn't buy all the circumstances. But overall, it was a satisfying, if not exactly terrifying, story.

I'd recommend to younger King fans or those just getting into his work. And YA readers. And people who have gotten or would like to get lost in the woods.(less)

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Aug 15, 2008 Reed rated it 5 of 5 stars

Let me begin by saying I am an ardent Stephen King fan and have been since reading "The Stand" back in 1975. First, I like the genre. Second I believe him to be the best story teller alive on the planet today. That being said, even though I have read nearly everything he has written under any pen name, this is the only review I plan to write for the extensive King library.
What is unique about this book was that it barely stepped into the usual worlds of Stephen King. It is a story about how a...more

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Aug 06, 2007 Louise A rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone - especially girls!

Shelves: greatreads

I love this book. It's one of my favorites of all time. I love Stephen King to begin with, but I think any one - even people who don't like his style or genre typically - would like this book. It's a great, simple story about the power of the human will to survive and the strength of the human spirit - it's bravery, humor, resilience and ingenuity - in the face of great obstacles. It is really a fantastic book for anyone who has, or is, going through a tough time. The plot is very simple - a you...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Kevin Lucia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Excellent. Perfect for my 10 Honors English class to close out the year, in a few months....

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Aug 28, 2012 Jane Stewart rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult-adventure-fiction

Engaging, enjoyable, and intriguing about a girl lost and surviving in the woods. Nature is the enemy.

I was reluctant to read this because I feared it might be similar to The Blair Witch Project - being stalked by a supernatural creature, being afraid, and being a victim for most of the story. I was wrong. It’s not like that at all. I’m so pleased. I enjoyed it. I loved Trisha’s attitude. I was intrigued and charmed. Yes she is alone and lost in the woods. But what is interesting are her thought...more Engaging, enjoyable, and intriguing about a girl lost and surviving in the woods. Nature is the enemy.

I was reluctant to read this because I feared it might be similar to The Blair Witch Project - being stalked by a supernatural creature, being afraid, and being a victim for most of the story. I was wrong. It’s not like that at all. I’m so pleased. I enjoyed it. I loved Trisha’s attitude. I was intrigued and charmed. Yes she is alone and lost in the woods. But what is interesting are her thoughts and actions. It’s like she has been assigned undesirable and boring chores, but she trudges along, does the job, and hopes to be done soon. She finds a number of things icky and gross. She talks to herself and thinks about her favorite baseball player. At times her personal voice of doubt comes in telling her how bad things are. Then she makes those thoughts go away.

I usually don’t like heroine stupidity. In this book Trisha does some very stupid things, but that’s ok because she is a nine-year-old girl. She doesn’t have adult judgment. It fits her character. It is reasonable that she doesn’t know about hugging trees. Instead, she looks for a stream of water that she believes will lead her to the ocean like in the Amazon jungle. But that doesn’t work here. So her lack of knowledge gets her into trouble.

The dangers to Trisha are lack of food, water, shelter, and warmth. She suffers insect bites. At times she senses she is being watched or followed. She may be the prey of an animal. I was surprised and delighted with her actions during a major conflict. And I was pleased with the happy ending for Trisha. I had tears of relief.

This reminded me of “Hatchet” by Gary Paulsen, about a thirteen year old boy surviving alone in the wilderness. That story was written by a wilderness survival guy and I was wowed by things happening in the wild. King’s book has survival elements but is more about the girl’s thoughts and attitude. Both books are good for young adults, as long as one is ok with occasional strong language in King’s book.

The narrator Anne Heche was excellent.

DATA:
Narrative mode: 3rd person. Unabridged audiobook reading time: 6 hrs and 36 mins. Swearing language: strong but rarely used. Sexual content: none. Setting: 1998 New England. Book copyright: 1999. Genre: young adult adventure fiction. Ending: happy.

OTHER BOOKS:
For a list of my reviews of other Stephen King books, see my 5 star review of Carrie.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
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Feb 09, 2010 john Adams rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

I give this book two and half stars. By now my love of Stephen King can by found throughout these reviews. This book satisfies most of those requirements. Well written. Quick fun read. Well drawn characters. Scary interesting plot. So I guess the reason that it gets two and half stars is the fact that it is more of a short story than a full length novel. There is simply not that much to it—which is my complaint of all character driven short stories. Character driven short stories simply lack the...more
I give this book two and half stars. By now my love of Stephen King can by found throughout these reviews. This book satisfies most of those requirements. Well written. Quick fun read. Well drawn characters. Scary interesting plot. So I guess the reason that it gets two and half stars is the fact that it is more of a short story than a full length novel. There is simply not that much to it—which is my complaint of all character driven short stories. Character driven short stories simply lack the length (of plot and depth) to make them all that interesting. A girl gets lost in the woods and has a complete man vs nature conflict. The “Stephen King” element to it is that she is being tracked by some kind of beast (a wolverine or bear thing). It is never made clear whether the beast is an element of reality or a figment of her imagination. He leaves it for the reader to decide. The problem is that the other element of “Stephen Kingness” is that the girl has visions and conversations with baseball star Tom Gordon. It is made quite clear that Tom Gordon is a figment of her imagination and one of her survival mechanisms. Thus in my mind, it becomes an easy decision: she dreams up Tom Gordon so she dreams up the beast. Makes the most sense. She has visions of good and visions of bad. Death and survival haunt her. Which is in fact really great psychological writing. Which this book is. It just lacks the depth that is characteristic of Stephen King. I really imagined this book to be a poorer version of Life of Pi. Survival, Man vs Nature, an interesting little girl, psychology that is imagined in reality, and an end that is either life or death. The most interesting elements for me were the lost in the woods elements. What would you do if you were lost? How would you view the landscape? Would you turn around in a bog? Would you eat the berries, etc? I also suppose I have read a lot of Stephen King this year so the two and half star rating is a judgement against his other works as much as it is against everything else written. It was worth the seven bucks I spent on it. If you are riding the bus it is perfect, but if you are looking for something more engaging that will draw you in, spend some mental energy, and kill lots of time, this probably isn't what you want to buy.
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Nov 09, 2012 Janie Johnson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: stephen-king

When I decided to read this book, I was looking for a fast easy read. And this book is definitely that. I don’t think it is one of King’s best, but the book seemed to be quite charming. A story told through the eyes of a 9 year old girl can be nothing but that. There really was no scare to the tale, but a whole lot of adventure.

I even found myself giggling from time to time because of the thought process that had to go along with this book. The frame of mind King was in when he was able to deliv...more

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Sep 30, 2008 Kylie Depue rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 28, 2008 Shannon K rated it 4 of 5 stars

When nine-year-old Trisha McFarland strays from the a branch of the Appalachian trail, tired of the bickering between her mom and brother, she gets lost in the forest and struggles to survive. As days and hours pass, she runs out of food and starts to hallucinate creatures following her so she looks to her Walkman for comfort. She wanders father and farther astray, determined that the river will lead to civilization while she passes beyond her search party and imagines Tom Gordon, the relief Red...more

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Nov 26, 2008 Geert Goeman rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: The fans of Stephen King

'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon' by Stephen King is a real thriller, a pageturner. A girl of only 9 years old went walking with her mother and her brother in an enormous great wood. The young girl had to pee and so she lost her brother and her mother. In her panic to get back to her family, she takes a turning that leads deeper into the wood: she get lost... She had no food or drinks with her. It takes her 5 days to find the inhabitable world.

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Feb 14, 2008 Crystal rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Non-Stephen King Fans

Recommended to Crystal by: My Grandmother (seriously!)

First of all, I need to point out that this book is *nothing* like the standard King lineup. Its a refreshing change of pace for his Constant Reader.

Strangely enough, I think Stephen King felt the same way. There's a passion in the lines of this one that almost makes the words glow on the page.

If I were to recommend a Stephen King book to a "fraidy cat" this would be the one. Its not scary, not even really creepy, although it does have some fairly tense scenes.

You'll love this little girl by t...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, what-has-roderic-got-me-into

Recommended by my boyfriend

A suggested alternate title:
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Or:
How Little Girls Go Pee In The Woods

Believable, maybe. Scary, not really. Entertaining, you betcha!
My first fiction Stephen King read. I read On Writing some time ago and it was pleasing to see him break his own rules:

"She intoned".

Nobody's perfect.

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Dec 28, 2007 Tyler rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Oddly, I felt this story could've survived without the actual supernatural element added to it. It could easily have been passed off as psychology without the final confrontation and variety of dead animals and I don't believe it would have lost anything. Seeing Trisha transform from a little girl to a survivor is quite fascinating and well done. I was actually caught by surprise when the hunter appeared in the chapter "Bottom of the Ninth" despite several times it being mentioned that God doesn...more

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Dec 23, 2008 Patrick rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book was okay. I read it over winter break one year in college. It held my interest, and I appreciated all the insider-New England references (1-800-54 GIANT...it's stuck in your head now, isn't it?), but the ending sucked, sucked, sucked. In a way, King was a victim of his own good writing, in that he paced the story well and did such a great job with dramatic build-up that the ending's big reveal couldn't help but disappoint. But goddamn, did it disappoint. Pretty much ruined the whole bo...more

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Oct 18, 2008 Melissa rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Stephen King Fans, Horror Fans

Recommended to Melissa by: Friend

Shelves: with-reviews, adult-fiction

My friend wanted to convince me that I could enjoy a Stephen King book. I had read Misery a few years back, and while I could appreciate Stephen King's writing style, the horror genre was not my forte. Finally she told me that I had to read this book before I could make any decisions about liking or not liking Stephen King books.

I have to admit, this one wasn't bad. I did enjoy the book much more than I enjoyed Misery. Would that make me want to go out and read other Stephen King books? No, but...more

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Mar 02, 2009 Rodney rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Once upon a time, I could buy Stephen King books with confidence it would be a good read.

I think this book is the worst one I've read by King, and maybe one of the worst I've ever read, period. I do not have to words to properly express how crappy this book was.

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Oct 10, 2011 Kathy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: stephen-king, read-in-2011

Well, I finally read this book. It took me long enough. And all I can say is Uncle Stevie does it again! He takes a simple scenario and makes you wonder what is real and what isn't? Here you have, 9 year old Tricia McFarland, who's hiking w/ her mom and brother, who loses her way in the woods. Thanks to her spunk, courage and imaginary friend (so to speak) baseball player, Tom Gordon she pushes on. Is she alone in the woods? Or is it just the imagination of a little girl? I wasn't able to put th...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Ronna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Sorry Steven King, I either love or will NOT read your books ( REALLY not into horror of any kind), but this book really spoke to me!! Little girl lost in the woods who shows that she need not give in to fear! Need more stories of kids who are survivors and not lost as victims. Whole book is driven by her thoughts and actions only
Great to read a story about a victor instead of a victim!!!! Kids should read this for fun , and to know they DO have the power of survival!!! Conquer fear and use the...more

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Apr 13, 2013 Ghoule rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 25, 2013 Fin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Stephen King is arguably the most renown author today. His work is beyond famous and his story telling is simply grand.Though I find no pleasure in reading, I was content with spending my time reading this novel.

Trisha is a nine year old girl, though she seems drastically mature and wise beyond her years. The constant bickering between her mother and older brother Pete have been gnawing away at her for months and now the three of them are going on a hiking trip to get some quality bonding time...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Austenlove rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

Stephen King ist einer meiner Lieblingsautoren. Das liegt wohl daran, dass ich bei ihm immer weiß, dass ich ein gutes Buch lese, egal welches ich auswähle. Er schafft es jedes Mal mich auf eine Reise mitzunehmen und mir etwas neues beizubringen. Daher, und wegen seinem wunderbaren, flüssigen Schreibstil, lese ich seine Werke gern zwischen schwereren Werken von anderen Autoren.
Hierbei geht es um ein Mädchen, das sich auf einer Wanderung in der Wildnis verirrt und so auf sich allein gestellt ist....more

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Feb 21, 2013 Tiffany rated it 4 of 5 stars

First, let it be known that I am a very bias fanatic of Stephen King. I'll never forget the first time I read The Shining when I was eleven (yes, eleven. I know, I was weird). It was by far the scariest thing I'd ever read/imagined/heard of/saw! It gave me nightmares for weeks! As I grew up, my Sci-fi fanatic mother and I watched countless Stephen King movies (Cujo, The Shining, IT, Rose Red, Carrie, etc.) and I would read the books to continue scaring myself. (I don't really know why I do this)...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Al rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

SUMMARY:
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,...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Ben L rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King is a stalemate in the consideration of overall quality literature. I say this because when you consider all of its strengths and weaknesses, it isn’t tasteless, neither is it enthralling and captivating, it’s just average. There are many contributing factors that make this story an enjoyable read at some times, but tedious and annoying during others.

The main character, Trisha, is a rambunctious nine year old who can only be as good as Stephen King ma...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Jennifer rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, horror

“The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon” is a wonderful example of how Stephen King can take something as simple as a hike and make it every person’s own private nightmare.

When 9 year-old Trisha goes with her mom and brother for a brief hike on the Appalachian Trail in Maine, her brief bathroom break becomes the thing of nightmares when she tries to take a shortcut off the path to get back to her mom and brother. Unfortunately for Trisha, her “shortcut” takes her deep into the woods leaving her alone an...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Nicholas rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is really fun! I read this while I was camping, and let me tell you, it was a pretty intense experience. If you haven't read this yet, I highly recommend you try and save it for when you can get outdoors. It's one of the shorter King works, but the book is taught and a survivalist page-turner.

Young Trisha MacFarlane does what every innocent hiker thinks is natural when out walking in the woods and faced with an intense urge to pee: she wanders just a little off the trail for a just a coupl...more This is really fun! I read this while I was camping, and let me tell you, it was a pretty intense experience. If you haven't read this yet, I highly recommend you try and save it for when you can get outdoors. It's one of the shorter King works, but the book is taught and a survivalist page-turner.

Young Trisha MacFarlane does what every innocent hiker thinks is natural when out walking in the woods and faced with an intense urge to pee: she wanders just a little off the trail for a just a couple minutes to relieve herself. And since she didn't go that far, it makes perfect sense to rejoin the curving trail and bypass a small chunk of woods by taking a short-curt through the brush to catch back up...right? Right. Thus begins a harrowing ordeal of survival that plays on all "civilized" peoples' fears of the great outdoors. Remarkable for King in this volume is his willingness to hold things back and let your animal instincts fill in the blanks. There's something stalking Trisha, or she thinks there is, and that feeling of being watched is so ingrained in our genetic make-up that you can't help but feel your skin crawl and look over your shoulder yourself when you're reading outdoors because everyone who's spent time camping or hiking knows that feeling. It's the feeling you get when you have to roll out of your bag in the middle of the night to take a whizz in the dark. It's the feeling of suspicion you get when the sun sets and the glow of the campfire casts illumination in a set radius that ends abruptly in the enhanced blackness created by your constricted pupils in the contrast of light. As such, it is one hundred percent believable and your fear becomes intimately sympathetic. He doesn't have to spell it out for you, and it doesn't even particularly matter if there is indeed something watching Trisha or what that something is - the idea of it is enough to get your sympathetic nervous system just takes over and your heart beats just a little faster and your imagination starts to play tricks on you.

Would I have had the same reaction reading this in my arm-chair at home? Probably not, but this book still has a lot going for it. Beyond that intimate knowledge of human fear of becoming prey to the big things that stalk our imagination, King also expertly toys with the psychological cycle of hope and despair that anybody who's ever felt lost as a kid, even in the middle of a shopping mall knows, right down to the superstitious things we whisper to ourselves to help ourselves cope (If Tom Gordon gets the save, I'll be saved too!). The psychological drama that goes on inside this brave little girl's head is well-thought out and contrived so that, again, you're right in her shoes.

Definitely one of my favorites of King's shorter works and probably something I'll bump up in my list of books to recommend to people just starting out with King to give them the hook. The characters come alive, the situation and the fears presented are something that almost everyone can identify with, and it doesn't require the investment of time something more profound and developed like IT or The Stand needs to get the most out of.(less)

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May 21, 2012 Todd Russell rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, baseball

A little girl goes off the trail to go the bathroom in privacy and ends up in a disorienting odyssey trying to find her way back to the path--and civilization. To keep her spirits, she listens to Boston Red Sox games, particularly her favorite closer, Tom Gordon on her Walkman. At least as long as her batteries stay alive.

Mr. King loves the Red Sox almost as much as he loves telling spooky stories, there's simply no missing that passion in this tale. What hurts this one, like some of King's othe...more

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Mar 04, 2012 John Wiswell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is at least my third time reading The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, but the first in about a decade. I’m staggered by how well it’s held up, and how it holds for the same reason it clicked back then. Patricia MacFarland’s tale of getting lost in the wilderness and seeking survival and civilization isn’t special until you add King’s human element. Trisha is what sells this book, not her plight.

One of King’s greatest strengths is to make things you’ve never experienced feel familiar. Here Trisha...more This is at least my third time reading The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, but the first in about a decade. I’m staggered by how well it’s held up, and how it holds for the same reason it clicked back then. Patricia MacFarland’s tale of getting lost in the wilderness and seeking survival and civilization isn’t special until you add King’s human element. Trisha is what sells this book, not her plight.

One of King’s greatest strengths is to make things you’ve never experienced feel familiar. Here Trisha has food poisoning and is vomiting her brains out in a swamp, face-down in leaves, with no hope of being found and no bearings on where she is. I’ve never been there, and you probably haven’t either. Yet the more specific it gets, the more tangible it gets. A commercial jingle just so happens to pass through her head, and she finds herself mumbling it in-between bouts of vomiting, perhaps to calm her, or perhaps because that part of her brain is on auto-pilot. Again, I’ve never been in that circumstance. Yet in the throes of disease, and in particular in the throes of throwing up, I’ve had bizarre things get stuck in my head, and I have murmured along with them, even repeating them hours afterward. Beyond sympathy for the girl’s circumstances, and comprehension for why she’s lost or scared or sick, there’s that intensely specific element that rings true and executes uniquely in King’s prose. No other author can turn singing “Dial 1-800-54-GIANT” into the thing that makes a lost little girl throwing up in the woods feel absolutely real.

This is one of the reasons I revere King: no one has his sense of character and human proclivities. Anyone can write a story about a girl in peril or someone getting lost in the woods. These things happen all the time, and are written about perhaps even more frequently. But no else writes Patricia MacFarland, a girl who wishes her father were closer while also fearing about alcoholism, a girl who tries so hard to please her mother while being infuriated with everything she does, and who crushes on a baseball player she’s never met and imagines he’s keeping watch so that it’s safe to sleep when she’s too tired to walk anymore. This character is so dynamic, such a bundle of complex reactions, of inside jokes and pop culture and human insecurities and optimism and self-loathing cynicism, that the worst part of the book is that more books aren’t like it. There is more depth and originality to her in these 224 pages than there is to Harry Potter in 3,000+ pages.

The novel is a heady mixture of Trisha’s internal life and what details she can wring out of her world. We know her environment and fear its darkness, but also overhear radio broadcasts on her walkman. Conserving the battery means we only get a little – a little of the message that authorities know she’s missing but aren’t looking in the right place, a little of an anonymous caller who claims she was kidnapped and puts help on the wrong path, and on at least one night, the anxious hope of the end of a baseball game, awaiting her beloved Tom Gordon to save the inning.

Because she’s half-starved, tired, out of her element, and in charge of her own life in totally new ways, things spill out of her. Particularly in the first half of the novel, as she’s easing into realization of how lost she is, she fills the void of human interaction and stimulation with chatter and memory. As she hunts for food, she may remember talking about bands or television with her best friend. This, too, is uncannily accurate to the way walking through the woods can be, when, with nothing immediate to occupy your mind, your life can entertain or haunt you.

We get brief interludes that seem to be from outside the forest – seeing her divorcing parents meet, potentially hook up together, her brother going through a grieving process over one of her dolls – and can legitimately wonder whether these are fugal daydreams of a haggard girl, or if we’re given graceful insight into how the world is behaving in her absence. Particularly on this third reading, mixing those in with the hallucinations of Tom Gordon and a science teacher claiming to be God produced entertaining speculation as to how deep Trisha’s coping mechanisms functioned. Even knowing the ending, it’s this level of investment in a character that made her being stalked by creatures and scrounging for food scary. For Horror to work, you usually have to make me care about the horrified person.
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Feb 01, 2012 Farrah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2scared2read-2scared2stop, authors-to-watch, strong-character

i´ve only recently begun exploring Kings body of work again, after finding alot of his storys to have too much religious subtext and or good vs evil elements.

this story caught my eye, simply because its an origional concept.

first off, and perhaps most importantly, this story is HORRIFIC in its brutality and descriptions of the trials and hardships a young (9 yr old) girl goes through when she becomes lost in the forests.it is not for people who take offense or get upset by children facing horror...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Dianne Socci-Tetro rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: re-read

Stephen King has the spectacular ability of taking our deep seated fears and turning them into our worst nightmares. With “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon” he has done it again.

Have you ever gone hiking and went off trail to do your business without your hiking companions knowing where you were or what you were doing? Did you ever imagine that you could get lost even a few yards away from a well-traveled trail? Now imagine if you were a 9-year-old girl. Perhaps you have had a little wilderness tra...more

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About Stephen King

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. 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...more Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947, the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. 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.

He and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971. He met Tabitha in the stacks of the Fogler Library at the University of Maine at Orono, where they both worked as students. As Stephen was unable to find placement as a teacher immediately, the Kings lived on his earnings as a laborer at an industrial laundry, and her student loan and savings, with an occasional boost from a short story sale to men's magazines.

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.(less)

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Quotes from The Girl Who Loved Tom...

“It was like drowning, only from the inside out.” — 93 people liked it

“The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted.” — 40 people liked it

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