Call number
FIC KIN
Collection
Publication
Scribner (1999), 224 pages
Description
Fiction. Literature. Suspense. Thriller. HTML:The acclaimed #1 New York Times bestseller from Stephen Kingâ??uniquely frightening suspense about a young girl lost in the woods as night falls, with only the voice of her beloved Red Sox relief pitcher to sustain her and help her surviveâ??maybe. During a six-mile hike on the Maine-New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Trail, nine-year-old Trisha McFarland quickly tires of the constant bickering between her older brother and her recently divorced mother. But when she wanders off by herself, she becomes lost in a wilderness maze full of peril and terror. As night falls, Trisha has only her ingenuity as a defense against the elements, and only her courage and faith to withstand her mounting fears. For solace she tunes her headphones to broadcasts of Boston Red Sox baseball games and follows the gritty performances of her hero, relief pitcher Tom Gordon. And when the reception begins to fade, Trisha imagines that Tom Gordon is with herâ??the protector from an enemy who may or may not be imagined...one who is watching her, waiting for her in the dense, dark… (more)
Subjects
Media reviews
As the narrator puts it: "The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted. She knew that now. She was only 9, but she knew it, and she thought she could accept it."
Thanks to King's gruesome imagination, you as a reader feel the sharpness of those teeth.
User reviews
LibraryThing member wiremonkey
Trisha McFarland gets lost in the woods while on a six-mile hike in the Appalachians with her recently divorced mother and her angry older brother.
And that, folks, sums up the plot of this tightly crafted, superb novel for young adults by Mr. King. In fact, I don't think I even knew what "tightly
It is so simple, so elegant: A little girl gets lost in the woods. As Trisha would say, "Yeah baby."
But then how would she act? What would she be thinking? What would she do right? What would she do wrong? What would she encounter? From this small thread, Stephen King weaves a complicated, tense and yes, extremely creepy tale. Trisha McFarland is a kid whose parent just got divorced. Who's brother is unhappy and acting out. Whose mother is preoccupied with getting them settled in a new place, with dealing with her older brother. Trisha's face hurts from trying to be the family's sole source of cheer and optimism. So when she lags behind on the hike and feels the urge to pee, she doesn't have the energy to interrupt her mother and brother's squabbling and simply ducks behind some tress. And then one bad decision leads to another. And they are all so plausible. You can see why she would choose to go one way instead of the other. Why she would try to keep going instead of sitting still and waiting to be rescued.
King uses Trisha's love of baseball and her crush on player Tom Gordon as a structure for the novel. Each chapter is an inning. The question is, will Trisha be able to "close" the game like her Boston Red Sox hero? As time goes on and Trisha gets more and more lost, she must rely on her own inner strength to carry her through. But her inner strength isn't incredible or fraught with mad skillz Ă la Katniss Everdeen. Trisha is a city girl and only has a bare bones knowledge of nature survival. But she is smart and she is feisty and she does want to live. So despite getting stung, falling down a cliff, drinking bad water and starving, despite the feeling that she is being constantly watched, she soldiers on.
Though there are no monsters in this book, no evil men bent on evil deeds, King still manages to make your adrenaline start pumping at every snap of the branch, at every shadow. You are so much in Trisha's head that you see her fears come to life and jump out of the bushes claws at the ready, teeth salivating for your flesh.
I would recommend this book to anybody who loves a good yarn, but especially those young people who enjoy a thrilling survival story. If this story leaves you with anything it will leave you with this one truth:
Nature sure is scary.
And that, folks, sums up the plot of this tightly crafted, superb novel for young adults by Mr. King. In fact, I don't think I even knew what "tightly
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crafted" meant until I read this novel. I am in awe. From the very first sentence he had my hooked: "The World had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted."It is so simple, so elegant: A little girl gets lost in the woods. As Trisha would say, "Yeah baby."
But then how would she act? What would she be thinking? What would she do right? What would she do wrong? What would she encounter? From this small thread, Stephen King weaves a complicated, tense and yes, extremely creepy tale. Trisha McFarland is a kid whose parent just got divorced. Who's brother is unhappy and acting out. Whose mother is preoccupied with getting them settled in a new place, with dealing with her older brother. Trisha's face hurts from trying to be the family's sole source of cheer and optimism. So when she lags behind on the hike and feels the urge to pee, she doesn't have the energy to interrupt her mother and brother's squabbling and simply ducks behind some tress. And then one bad decision leads to another. And they are all so plausible. You can see why she would choose to go one way instead of the other. Why she would try to keep going instead of sitting still and waiting to be rescued.
King uses Trisha's love of baseball and her crush on player Tom Gordon as a structure for the novel. Each chapter is an inning. The question is, will Trisha be able to "close" the game like her Boston Red Sox hero? As time goes on and Trisha gets more and more lost, she must rely on her own inner strength to carry her through. But her inner strength isn't incredible or fraught with mad skillz Ă la Katniss Everdeen. Trisha is a city girl and only has a bare bones knowledge of nature survival. But she is smart and she is feisty and she does want to live. So despite getting stung, falling down a cliff, drinking bad water and starving, despite the feeling that she is being constantly watched, she soldiers on.
Though there are no monsters in this book, no evil men bent on evil deeds, King still manages to make your adrenaline start pumping at every snap of the branch, at every shadow. You are so much in Trisha's head that you see her fears come to life and jump out of the bushes claws at the ready, teeth salivating for your flesh.
I would recommend this book to anybody who loves a good yarn, but especially those young people who enjoy a thrilling survival story. If this story leaves you with anything it will leave you with this one truth:
Nature sure is scary.
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LibraryThing member silversurfer
Didn't love this book...not one his best.
LibraryThing member PeggyK49
I loved every minute of this book! I have to admit, not being a sports person, I had no idea who Tom Gordon was. When I found out he was a ball player, I hesitated, thinking that I didn't want to read about baseball. I am so very glad that I decided to take a chance and dive in anyway and the
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baseball part didn't put me off in the least. I was pulled in, rooting for Trish all the way, and thanked my lucky stars that I have never come close to being lost in the woods. I'd have never made it!. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon could be one of my favorite Stephen King books ever! Show Less
LibraryThing member jen.e.moore
Definitely one of the better Kings I've read - short and sweet, just walking the line between realism and King's brand of cosmic supernatural, and plenty realistically terrifying. It kinda makes me wish I liked baseball.
LibraryThing member PhoebeReading
I still can't believe how well Stephen King does women.Or in this case, a girl. As someone only a handful of years older than Trisha McFarland, the deliciously spunky, undoubtedly strong heroine of King's novella The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, I can speak with some degree of confidence about the
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uncanny quality of her character. And, as this story is utterly character-based, I can only call it a triumph--though I fear that King fans in search of a tightly-plotted volume redolent with King's usual supernatural shenanigans will have to look elsewhere.The year is 1998, and Trisha is a nine year old girl whose family--mom, dad, and petulant teenage brother--has been recently shattered by divorce. In an attempt at creating some semblance of togetherness, Trisha's mom Quilla drags her kids on one family-friendly field trip after another: to the auto museum, on a ski trip, and finally on a fateful summer hike through the Maine wilderness. Trisha only leaves the trail for a moment to pop a squat, but somewhat, she loses sight of her mother and brother--and so begins her nine-day-long harrowing trip through the wilderness.Trisha is a tomboy, the kind, I admit, I always aspired to be as a little girl. She's a daddy's girl--she and her father share a love of baseball and of Red Sox player Tom Gordon--but her mother's imbibed her with enough just enough wilderness knowledge (which berries are safe, how to pee without getting your jeans wet) to keep her afloat. As Trisha stumbles through the forest, we become increasingly aware of the tensions of her age. She and her girlfriend Pepsi are just beginning to explore pop music, and sexuality (they beg their moms to let them dress up as the Spice Girls for Halloween), but still memorize Double Dutch rhymes. Though Trisha's speech is peppered with her father's aphorisms (the kind of King-speech that just barely missed setting my teeth on edge in Lisey's Story, but is put to much better use here), she's also been growing increasingly aware lately of his predilection for beer. Though her character arc may be slight, this is a coming-of-age story, and that's no better evident than when Trisha muses that, after this experience, she'll quit quoting her father and her grandmother and start penning sayings of her own.It's good that King is so focused on Trisha's growth and character, because this truly is a character study, and not much besides eating berries and gathering nuts and following streams happens in this slim volume. There are hints of the supernatural, but they're never explained and could easily be hallucinatory, and the pacing flags a bit by the beginning of the "Bottom of the Seventh." But the book's short length and brisk structure saves it from being tiresome, and, like King's other meditations on claustrophobia (Gerald's Game, Misery) it's appropriately focused and realistically rendered. In a way, it recalls a book from my own youth--a story of a pair of snowbound teenagers called Snowbound!. But in that book, the relationship between the characters and nascent hints of romance were the focus. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is truly a story of survival, and Trisha's success rests squarely on her own shoulders, lending this book a feminist tint. Hell, never before have I felt so elated at the simple account of a girl catching a fish.There are a few problems here, but they're slight: a post-script that feels a bit saccharine for all that's come before it, a bottom-heavy structure. But frankly? Trisha herself is just so awesome that I hardly cared. I wish I'd read this when I was younger--closer to Trisha's age--and could have more directly drawn inspiration from it. As it is, all I can do is remind myself that sometimes a girl's moxy and smarts really can save the day. Show Less
LibraryThing member PaulaGalvan
This book is a novella compared to King's other works—only 224 pages. It's the horrifying story of Tricia McFarland, a nine-year-old getting lost in the woods for nine days. Being a baseball fan (as is King), she imagines Tom Gordon, a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, as her companion through the
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end days. It's not as scary as some of his others, but a quick, entertaining read. Show Less
LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
For me, this novella from Stephen King was totally unexpected, but I loved it nontheless. Nearly all of the students I've recommended it to have enjoyed it, and this in the end is a fairly quick and touching story about a young girl whose fantasies help her through being lost in the woods. It's
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easily read in one sitting, and something to easily get lost in for a rainy afternoon. Highly recommended for near anyone--even if you've no desire to read Stephen King based on his horror-driven reputation, this isn't typical King, and shouldn't be dismissed as horror. Show Less
LibraryThing member placo75
Definitely not one of his best. Fortunately a quick read.
LibraryThing member quickmind
I enjoyed this one. Its a pretty quick read, and King proved with this one that not all of his books have to be epic to be enjoyable. This is also a little more ambiguous with the supernatural, which is interesting. King's books always the supernatural elements that were terrifying, but he also had
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downright awful humans who were just as scary. But in this book he uses nature to be both beautiful and terrifying. He tells the story of a 9 year girl, big for her age, who gets lost in the woods and uses her will to survive. She has to forage for food and water, fend off insects and animals, and try to keep her wits about her. But, somewhere along the way, she starts to lose her mind a bit, and that's where the supernatural takes off. Did it happen, or was it all in her head? I'm like Mulder in that regard, where I Want To Believe, but the ambiguity is also scary. All I know is, the next time I go hiking, I'm staying on the path. Show Less
LibraryThing member Marlene-NL
This was one my least favourites by King. Normally I give them 4 or 5 stars. Did not even want to re-read which is so rare for me, so if you are new to this author, don't start with this one.
LibraryThing member Bridgey
If ever I have read a book that should never have been written, this is it. The whole story could easily be reduced to 20 or 30 pages. If I had to sum it up this is what i would say...
Girl gets lost in woods, girl swats bugs from face, girl falls down, girl swats more bugs from face. Girl then
The whold novel bored me to tears and I found myself wishing for the end more than any other book before.
If you haven't the slightest idea about baseball, I would also give this book a wide berth as the girl constantly is in talks with an imaginery version of Tom Gordan.
I really didn't think that King was capable of writing such crap, but he definately is.......
Girl gets lost in woods, girl swats bugs from face, girl falls down, girl swats more bugs from face. Girl then
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eats, adjusts backpack a few dozen times, swats even more bugs and falls down a bit more.The whold novel bored me to tears and I found myself wishing for the end more than any other book before.
If you haven't the slightest idea about baseball, I would also give this book a wide berth as the girl constantly is in talks with an imaginery version of Tom Gordan.
I really didn't think that King was capable of writing such crap, but he definately is.......
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LibraryThing member writestuff
When nine year old Trish McFarland, a rabid Red Sox fan, goes on a hike with her mother and brother, the farthest thing from her mind is getting lost. But when she steps off the path, a nightmare begins.
Stephen King has crafted a story of terror that recalls our most basic fear: the dark and the
King tells the story from young Trisha's POV, and keeps it interesting from beginning to end with palm sweating descriptions and suspense. A quick read, this is one an average reader can knock off in a day.
Recommended.
Stephen King has crafted a story of terror that recalls our most basic fear: the dark and the
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boogey monster. As Trisha wanders further and further into the woods, forced to use her cleverness to find food and shelter, she begins to sense she is being followed. The being that follows her is not beast or human, but something far more sinister and it circles near especially as night falls. Trisha looks to her Walkman - where the fading signal out of Boston broadcasts the Red Sox games - and to her favorite player, closer Tom Gordon to prepare herself for the inevitable showdown between herself and 'the God of the Lost' - her name for the monster.King tells the story from young Trisha's POV, and keeps it interesting from beginning to end with palm sweating descriptions and suspense. A quick read, this is one an average reader can knock off in a day.
Recommended.
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LibraryThing member bibliophileofalls
Shallow, redundant, really tiresome. These were never the thoughts and actions of a 9 year old girl even if she was big for her age Now I know why I don't read Stephen King. Never would have read it if it wasn't a discussion book club pick.
LibraryThing member katiekrug
In a nutshell: Somewhat desultory short novel about a girl lost in the woods.
This one didn't really work for me. I think it would have been better as a longish short story, rather than a shortish novel - it seemed as if it was being dragged out to meet a length requirement rather than unspooling a
This one didn't really work for me. I think it would have been better as a longish short story, rather than a shortish novel - it seemed as if it was being dragged out to meet a length requirement rather than unspooling a
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good narrative. Especially distracting to me was the fact that this girl is 9 years old but some of her thoughts and comments were more fitting to a teenager or even an adult. I repeatedly kept shaking my head, thinking "No 9 year old would ever think that, much less be able to articulate it." Show Less
LibraryThing member JBarringer
Not as exciting as the other books I've read by Stephen King. This one is a very mild read, and the creepy, scary bit might not be so creepy depending on how you interpret it. If you want a fast, easy Stephen King book that won't give you nightmares, this is a great pick, but if you are looking for
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the thrill of his darker work, this one may be very dull. I enjoyed the wilderness survival aspect of this book a lot, but the baseball references got a bit hard to follow. I'd have liked just a bit more narrative assistance to help me understand the baseball stuff as it applied to the story, cause otherwise those segments were just meaningless filler for me as someone who doesn't follow baseball and know the jargon. Show Less
LibraryThing member Chancelet
I enjoyed this book. By the start of it, I wasn't sure, but the MC quickly becomes relatable and the storyline, though fairly simple is interesting. What this little girl survives and how is thrilling. It's a relatively short book for SK and, for once, I could say I wished for more back story into
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the family's lives. Show Less
LibraryThing member krypto
Utterly compelling tale of a girl lost in the woods, where something lurks in the darkness. More of a short story than a novel, but just the correct length in my view. Stephen King has a way of getting to me that few other writers manage, and I didn't just care about the fate of the girl, I *was*
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her. As ever with SK, there's no way of predicting the ending. Show Less
LibraryThing member KarriesKorner
This short novel is filled with realistic suspense about a young girl who mistakenly wanders off in the woods while out with her mother and brother. What's intriguing about this book is the mental state of the little girl and her belief that there's something following her. It's possible there's
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something out there, but then again, it's possible that her mind is playing tricks on her due to exhaustion and dehydration. The reader will have to decide if it's real. Show Less
LibraryThing member nmfall08.m.ovalle
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,
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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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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LibraryThing member jacki
Uncharacteristic for a King novel. My only complaint is the girl was much too sophisticated for a nine year old.
LibraryThing member badpennylane
One of the few adventure/survival stories with a strong female protagonist. The story will inspire admiration for a clever and courageous young girl, and will delight those who think of Stephen King as confined to horror stories and pulp fiction — his insight into the nature of children is
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incredible. Show Less
LibraryThing member heidilove
i have no idea why this lovely little tale of being lost and finding oneself stuck with me so deeply but it did. And even after a third reading, i still like it enough to put it in the top ten.
LibraryThing member ragwaine
Baseball as a major theme in any book causes it to lose 2 stars automatically. Boring and stupid.
LibraryThing member andyray
This may well be the best work Stephen King has ever done. Using his own minimalistic technique, this story of a nine year old (almost 10 and is big for her age) protagonist who finds herself lost in the Northern Maine woods, grips you from the start and builds subtly to a quiet ending. For once,
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he ended the damned thing right. SK has always had his problems with that. He evokes the works of Hawthorne ("young Goodman Brown") and Melville (Barnaby the Scrviner:) with the darkness of the God of the Lost. At the end, we find it's just a 400 black bear. Isn't it? We're not really sure, because it doesn't act like a bear (which are mostly herbivorus) and it doesn't (sometimes) look like a bear. Show Less
LibraryThing member kmoynihan
This book was fantastic. It's not what I'd say is "scary", but it does make you think about the what ifs and how would yous.
Awards
Kentucky Bluegrass Award (Nominee — Grades 9-12 — 2001)
Lincoln Award: Illinois Teen Readers' Choice Award (Nominee — 2005)
South Dakota Teen Choice Book Awards (Nominee — 2000)
Volunteer State Book Award (Nominee — Young Adult — 2003)
Evergreen Teen Book Award (Nominee — 2002)
Best Fiction for Young Adults (Selection — 2000)
Pages
224
ISBN
0684867621 / 9780684867625