Review: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I bought this book 18 years ago on it's release in hardback in 1999. And never read it. I don't know why... I grew up with King, one of his 'constant readers' and, while his output was slightly hit and miss in the '90s (I loved the Green Mile serial novel; wasn't overly impressed by Bag of Bones; I know I read Insomnia but can't remember anything about it - perhaps I fell asleep?), The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon should have drawn me in straight away - King is a master at writing about childhood and survival and nightmares...

I finally pulled it off the shelf after hearing a passing reference to it on a podcast. And it is excellent, classic Stephen King, up there with The Body and IT in how it gets into the experience of being a child in a scary world. The plot is a simple one - 9 year-old Patricia McFarland steps off the path for a pee while hiking in the forest and gets lost - and the book is a very slim volume in King terms, but it a wonderful book, part adventure, part horror, part fairy story. As Tricia heads deeper into the forest, and deeper into despair, she is accompanied, at intervals, by Tom Gordon, her favourite Red Sox pitcher (and a real-life baseball player), who she suspects is not really there, and a more malevolent presence, always just out of sight, which she suspects really is there.

I loved this book and the last line is a real tearjerker and one of King's best.

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