The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

Started: 26.5.26

Finished: 26.5.26

Paperback

I've already had to abandon my plan to read all the Stephen King novels, in publication date order. I read Carrie, that was the first, and then DNF'd the second, Salem's Lot. The third is The Shining, which I bought on Kindle, but I'm trying to whittle down my physical books at the moment, so I've decided to just read the Stephen King books that I have, in any order, and try to get a hold of the remaining ones from the library.

This one is about Trisha, a nine year old girl who is on a hike with her family, when she veers from the path and gets lost in the woods. And that's basically all it's about. She's a big baseball fan (Tom Gordon is her favourite player) and luckily she has her Walkman with her, so to keep her spirits up she keeps tuning into the radio broadcasts of the Red Sox games. She hallucinates / daydreams that Tom is with her in the woods, talking to her about baseball; this is a kind of metaphor throughout the book - how to win a game, how to survive in the woods. Unfortunately, I neither understand or care about baseball, so I kept skimming over these parts.

Trisha was remarkably resilient for a nine year old girl, to the point that I found it quite hard to believe that she would have the sense to do some of the things she does. She was a very likeable character though, and I was really rooting for her.