Review of "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" by Stephen King

“The world had teeth and it could bite you with them anytime it wanted…”

So begins a novel that weaves imagery, suspense, and emotions into a rich web of thought and action: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King. This book starts out simple, but as the storyline goes on, increasingly complex issues and conflicts arise. A young girl, Trisha McFarland, tries to find her way out of the woods in the northeastern United States. As she becomes hopelessly lost, she starts imagining that she is with pitcher Tom Gordon, and relies on him to help her survive.

At the beginning of the novel, Trisha is recapitulating over how she got lost in the woods. The narrator tells the reader about her parents’ divorce, the move, and about her teenage brother, Pete. She and Pete live with their mother in southern Maine. Pete is very unhappy because he has no friends and wants to go back to Boston and live with his father. Trisha’s mother takes Trisha and Pete to a hike in the northeastern portion of the Appalachian Trial. She and Pete argue the whole way, while Trisha daydreams that she is with Boston Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon.

On the trail, Trisha’s mother and Pete are still arguing. They pay no attention to Trisha, and finally, she gets tired of it. She sees a fork in the trail, and goes down the other way to get away from them. She thinks that it would be easy to get back, but soon, she gets lost. She wanders around some more, and gets farther and farther from the main path.

After a while, Trisha finds that she has brought her Walkman. She listens to some stations, but there is nothing interesting on. She remembers that she read about finding one’s way out of the woods by water. She starts searching for a stream, which would eventually lead to the sea.

In the middle of the night, Trisha suddenly realizes that there is a thing in the woods. She feels that it is near her, and is extremely scared. She imagines Tom Gordon is guarding her, and soon, she is...