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The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: much better then the boner thing
Review: I found this story both fascinating and scary at the same time. Anyone who has grown up around a large wooded area would agree. It makes you think that sometimes there actually might be something lurking around the next tree.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: No Fall Classic
Review: King is still sharp, yes, but what is young Trisha thinking? Clearly this heroine has misplaced loyalties. She clings desperately to Gordon and the 43 straight he saved last season, but what of the post-season, Trisha? Where was that string against the hated Cleveland Indians? Where's the promised land? The fact that the streak survived another clumsy Boston October doesn't make ME feel any better, young lady. YOU need to reacquaint yourself with what it means to be a winner. The Sox don't need this kind of pre-playoff nostalgia. The ghost of Babe Ruth still haunts Fenway. Two stars.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Couldn't read/turn the pages fast enough!
Review: For all of you Stephen King fanatics out there, Stephen's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon hits bookstores on Tuesday, April 6. Definitely vintage King (imo). Though some of the words/thoughts used by the main character, Trisha, seemed a little too grown-up, she is a character you'll come to cheer for just as much as she idolized her hero, Tom Gordon (a relief pitcher for the Red Sox). For me, once I reached the part where she tumbled head over heels down a hillside, I had to keep reading. In fact, I couldn't read/turn the pages fast enough. In fact, the tension was as thick for me as it was in the climatic scenes of classics such as Cujo, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, & It. Great stuff for those of you who like to be hit over the head with suspense, tension, a little blood & guts, the ewwwwwwww factor, and characters who have a seemingless bottom of will to go on ... oh, and don't forget, a bogeyman! <ewg> Sue <<--- who ain't gonna veer off the beaten path any time too soon after reading this story!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: King shows why he is the king
Review:

One year has passed since none-year old Trisha McFarland's parents divorced. Her mother gained prime custody of Trisha and her older brother Pete. The trio left the Boston suburb of Malden to live in Maine. Pete misses his old life and is always fighting with their mother. On those weekends in which the two children do not stay with their father in Boston, their mother takes them on field trips.

Today, they begin the six-mile hike along the Appalachian trail. As Pete and their mom argue, Trisha stops to go to the bathroom. When she finishes, the little girl realizes she is separated from her companions. Over the next nine days she struggles to survive against an unknown enemy who has left many dead animals in his wake. For salvation, Trisha turns to her imagination and her hero, Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon, to help guide her through the nightmarish woods and her unknown foe. However, the odds of a pre-teen surviving this ordeal is almost as great as the Red Sox finally overcoming the curse of Babe Ruth.

THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON is Stephen King at his most frightening best. No one blends real world and nightmare better than Mr. King and with this novel he does that very well. The story line, which moves along like an exciting nine inning baseball game, is filled with real life elements such as Tom Gordon being the prime stopper for the Sox. The terror felt by Trisha also seems genuine. As these elements combine into a fabulous plot, couch potatoes have a one sitting treat that takes them along the Appalachian Trail.

<P<Harriet Klausner

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I Loved "The Girl who loved tom gordon!!!"
Review: Excellent with the most surreal teror and realistic power of King's words that bring terrifying images on ink and paper by using the forest as a setting.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: King Hits Another One Outta the Park!
Review: All of a sudden, the mother and brother walking through the path in the woods stop fighting. The brother looks back, and doesn't see his nine-year-old sister Trisha, who was supposed to be following behind. Where is she? Where could she have gone?

This is Opening Day of The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, the new Stephen King novel about faith, and perserverance, and baseball. Little Trisha McFarland, purely by accident, gets lost in the Maine woods after seperating herself from her family. What begins as a family outing one early Saturday morning becomes a long, dark journey for this little girl, one whose outcome is always uncertain. For Trisha may not be alone in the woods ... and whatever is out there may be hungry.

The bulk of this short novel deals primarily with Trisha's lonesome journey deeper and deeper into the heart of the woods. One is often reminded of a similar journey by Jack Sawyer in the earlier book The Talisman, but Jack had the backdrop of America to rely on. Here, Trisha has only her wits, her rudimentary knowledge of the woods, and her Walkman, which broadcasts Red Sox baseball games, featuring her favorite player, Tom Gordon. The games become sort of a lifeline for her, a way to connect with the world of lights and people as she moves further and further away from that world. To keep her company, she imagines Gordon is with her at times, talking to her and generally keeping her sane. As the actual broadcasts begin to fade out, she relies more and more on her make-believe Tom Gordon, who speaks to her philosophically, and has faith in a saving God.

Trisha herself begins to lose faith in Tom Gordon's God. She has to contend with mosquitoes, wasps, water that makes her sick, a dwindling food supply, encroaching lonliness and a series of darker and darker hallucinations. In the midst of all these trials, she senses something, a God of the Lost, stalking her as prey, following her on her dark journey. This God becomes more real when she finds angry slash-marks on the trees in her path ... and severed heads of animals seemingly left specifically for her to see.

Whether or not The God of the Lost is real becomes the true focus of the novel, and the issue of faith has never been more subtly presented. At every turn, Trisha is knocked down, but she gets up again (it's no mistake that Chumbawumba is the tape left in her Walkman), and it becomes fascinating to watch this little girl survive. At times, her adventure becomes disheartening (a trip through a boggy swamp is especially upsetting) but as Trisha puts more faith in Tom Gordon, we put more faith in her. Every time Gordon makes a save for the Red Sox, he gestures briefly toward the sky, an acknowledgement of his trust in God. We sweat out the pages of this book that bares his name to see if Trisha will make her own save.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is one of the most tense and scary books Stephen King has ever written. The writing is crisp and clear, and he doesn't seem to have time to go into much exposition. He tells us what we need to know, and moves on. This is no long, flowing narrative; here, the pages whiz by in a flash, perpetuated by the need to know if Trisha will ever get out of the woods, and what the God of the Lost truly is. If ever King wrote a book with "the gotta" in mind, this is it.

Intense, dark, and short enough to be read in one sitting, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is ultimately one of King's most satisfying novels. God may not love the Red Sox, but to Stephen King fans, He's been pretty fair. Play ball!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Providence Journal Bulletin review
Review: 3.5.99 00:03:07 RED SOX NOTEBOOK Oh the horror! Gordon is savior of King book

By SEAN McADAM and STEVEN KRASNER Journal Sports Writers

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Best-selling horror novelist and lifelong Red Sox fan Stephen King visited City of Palms Stadium yesterday for the team's exhibition opener agains the Minnesota Twins.

King has just completed his latest book, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon , which is scheduled to be published in the first week of April. The book tells the story of a young girl who gets lost in the woods of Maine, and finds her way by listening to Red Sox broadcasts on the radio. Tom Gordon is the little girl's favorite player.

King said he came up with the idea of using Gordon as a central character because he was ``fascinated with the act of thanking God for the save,'' as Gordon routinely does by pointing toward the sky after the final out.

``When you're lost in the woods,'' said King, ``you're looking to be saved. This is Hansel and Gretel without Hansel.''

King also hoped to meet with Minnesota Twins pitching prospect Matt Kinney yesterday. Kinney, like King, is a native of Bangor, Maine. He was dealt by the Red Sox to the Twins last year in the deal for Orlando Merced and Greg Swindell.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: this book is gonna be great, the next one, too.
Review: ''The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon'' is a 224-page reader in which the main character is a 9-year-old girl who gets lost in the back woods of Maine. She copes with the situation by listening to Sox radio broadcasts (Joe Castiglione can be very soothing if you are lost in the wilderness). Gordon is her make-believe friend." Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe, 02/20/99. © Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fast Paced Look At the Mettle of a Nine Year Old
Review: I picked up Stephen King's "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" to see how well the author's work hewed to the writing advice he gives in "On Writing." Pretty well, it turns out. As a bonus, I liked this story.

The simple premise revolves around a nine year old lost in a huge woods with only her wits and a few supplies to sustain her. Her wits devolve upon Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon, her favorite player, whose image accompanies her. The imagined Gordon provides the inner voice she needs to meet the challenges of the deep woods and her own mind. Of course, there also lurks the unknown terror at the edge of the wood, but from King's reputation I assume that this nemesis provides much less horror than is usually found in his more famous works. Rather, the unknown terror provides suspense and a motivating force that this child must deal with. More would give away the crux of the story. Suffice to say the reader won't be disappointed by the end of the book.

Simple, but King's excellent writing sustains this simple premise over two hundred and fifty odd pages. His character development is wonderful -- one feels the little girl's (Trisha)emotions as she confronts her trials. His dialogue (in flashbacks) feels real and the whole story is believable.

This book works and is an excellent quick read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Stephen King Writes Awesome Books
Review: I really enjoyed this horror novel. But I didn't like they way Stephen kept saying that she didn't even notice she was doing it and the way he described to God of the Lost. But overall, this is an awesome book. Very hard to put down.


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