[Book] The girl who loved Tom Gordon - Stephen King

I got this book from a special Friend who travels a lot. She is almost the only person on the planet that can give me a book I haven´t read yet, without asking me anything. This was one of this events. CARLA CERES, this review is for you.

Synopsis: The story follows a 9 year old girl who finds herself lost in the woods after straying from her arguing mother and brother to pee. She continues to wander around the woods for nine days, trying to find her way out.

This synopsis is so faint, so empty that I probably would never have bought this book if I did not know Stephen King as if I do. If there´s a writer who can make this poor story really incredible, that guy is Stephen King.

Trisha is a normal girl, very intelligent, but her life is boring and her family is to blame for much of it. her parents are divorced and her brother has that delightful behavior of all teenagers in such situations. He's a pain in the ass, actually.

Well, knowing this, it's not so difficult to understand why Trisha goes into the woods with her mother and brother, but she carries her CD player along and walks a little way from them. There arguments are unbearable and she just needs some peace. So she thinks: She can pee quickly and hidden, then return to the trail without major problems.

And her problems start there. 

"She was afraid of the dark even when she was at home in her room, with the glow from the streetlight on the corner falling in thought the window. She thought that if she had to spend the night out here, she would die of terror"

What child would not die of terror in such situation? Trish was not different. When she was lost in the forest, she panicked and despaired as any other child would. And everything only got worse when the night came and together the mosquitos and other insects. The dark. The noises of the woods and, of course, worst of all: Her childish imagination.

"She wished briefly that she was dead - Better to be dead than have to endure such fear, better to be dead than to be lost."

My criticism of this book has to do with what gives Trish strength to go on. That girl really loves baseball, and one particular player, Tom Gordon, who walks by her side to calm her down and give her little survival tips. Sometimes he just shows up and sits there without saying anything and it calms down her scared heart. Trish is a child and makes bargains with herself and somehow this helps her to overcome the obstacles that only grow up each day that she is lost.

"If we win, if Tom gets the save, I´ll be saved. This thought came to her suddenly - it was like a firework bursting in her head." 

Now the good part of the story ...

Thirst, hunger, fright, terror, doubts and pain all over the child’s body are not enough for Mr. Stephen King. He wants more. He wants to alienate the girl’s mind and use her own imagination as a weapon. Everything in this forest is conducive to madness. The noises of the trees, the dark, endless nights and the buzzing of insects form what she calls the "cold voice."

And this cold voice, my friends, is totally inappropriate. It appears in the worst hours as a nightmare usually does. It says terrifying things when the girl desperately needs to calm down. It’s a delightful read!!

"You know what it was, the cold voice told her. It was the thing. the special thing that´s whatching you right now." 

To be fair, this is not King's best book. But even though it contains a lot of references to baseball that left me stuck for several pages, it's one of the easiest to read. It messes with the character´s mind and with ours too. Things are palpable here as in any other work of Stephen King and that is what keeps a legion of fans eager for everything he writes.

I hope "Suma de Letras" brings this work to Brazil, because Brazilian readers deserve to know this story in a beautiful and well-made edition. 

And this is my gift to my friend Carla Ceres who has brought me this book from Europe and asked me for a good review. I hope you liked what I tried to do here, and I hope you haven´t seem my languages mistakes.

In the end of the book, King keeps trying to scare us with this explanation:

" the wood themselves are real. If you should visit then on your vacation, bring a compass, bring good maps... and try to stay on the path." 

It´s impossible not to love a book written by the master of terror.