This book has been published first time in Great Britain in 1999, written by Stephen King. You might not know The girl who loved Tom Gordon but at least you should know King’s other books like Carrie, The Shining and Misery. By them King has been called ”King of horror” and it’s not a miracle. His skills to capture things in texts is unusual and unique.
The girl who loved Tom Gordon is a story of nine years old Trisha. She gets lost in the huge forest, when she tried to escape her mother and big brother’s fighting. After that she faced how cruel nature can be and began to believe that everything there was some kind of test to her. If she fight against the nature, she deserves to stay alive. If she doesn’t, she will never get out there. at time when hours and days was changing others, she started starving and seeing illusions. Her illusions about Tom Gordon (her favorite baseball player and ”heartthrob”) was crucial part of her tricky trip there while she tried survive by the mercy of nature.
The main character Trisha is a smart little girl, who won’t give up in bad situations. The story is told by her point of view and tells well how nine years old child could feel when they get lost. Panic, terror and a lot of crying could be something where many can identify with. But instead week, whining little girl, Trisha is really brave. She has learnt many things from her parents and books and she knows how to develop them.
Other characters was her divorced mother and father and her big brother. Shortly telling her mother tries always think what’s best for their children. With Trisha it works in some ways but with her brother not in any cases. Her Brother is teenager, who really don’t have many friends. His mother can’t understand why it’s so hard to him make new friendships and that’s mostly the reason why they keep fighting. But luckily both Trisha and her brother gets along with their dad. He is gentle and he knows how to talk to them. With Trisha and her father, they both have an enormous love with baseball.
Genre of the book is horror, but I really can’t find out which part of this book really filled that. I have read couple of books from Stephen King and I can swear that I have never been so scared when I have read others of that genre. King really is unbeatable horror writer but this book is far from his best ones.
The second genre is survival. Nine years old little girl in a huge forest, alone and lost. She faced many difficult situations, but she get over them. Personally I don’t believe it’s possible that so young girl knows that much than Trisha did about forests and nature – and not a word about that she could figure out some things all by herself! However book succeed to bring this genre well out.
Reading this book was quite slow and a bit frustrating, because in the first 100 pages there didn’t happened so much scary or exciting things. But like most King’s books, the start is always very describing and slowly going. The plot always gets more interesting and deeply after reading half of the story. That’s why people need to be patience while reading his books. Even this book didn’t please me so much, I will always say that King is one of my favorite author.