by Jay Wilburn
The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.
You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.
Whoever owned this copy of the novel before me dog-eared pages as they read and they read in really short bursts turning down the corner almost every few pages.
If I’m reading the sign-off at the end of the book correctly, King wrote this book in Long Boat Key in Florida and completed it in one day in February.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is for his son Owen who taught Stephen King more about the game of baseball than the other way around. This brings to mind the essay at the end of Nightmares & Dreamscapes in which King recounts Owen’s little league team making a run for the state championship. In this book, we turn baseball into a life and death proposition with the main character’s survival on the line.
King does a frustratingly great job of creating a survival tale where offered hope is snatched away and restored over and over.
TR-90 from Bag of Bones serves as a setting for part of the book and the burnt out swampy sections of wilderness bring back some of the dark history of the place.
“The stars fell” is a phrase that comes up in the novel Under The Dome later.
Our character likes Spice Girls, “Mmmbop,” an imaginary boy band, and her imaginary version of a real closer for the Red Sox. I wonder what that dude thinks about having his name committed to the Stephen King universe in a book title. I posted a sneak preview of this post on my Patreon page. My friend and fellow author Armand Rosamilia commented, “Read an interview with Tom ‘Flash’ Gordon when the book first came out and he was amused King had used him in the book. At the time he was the best closer in baseball (I’m partial as a diehard Red Sox fan) and this is one of the only King books I’ve ever read.”
Being shorter than his other work did not hurt this novel at all. It may arguably be very near the top of his works in terms of objective quality. It has a classic quality to it. Almost a young adult story sentimentality, but that doesn’t take away from the darkness, the struggle, or the depth of the story in any way. It is a straight-forward narrative, realistic, and well-balanced.
This story can be read as having supernatural elements and threats or it can be read with natural explanations to all the supernatural implications. I think that is perfect for this story and a tough balance for King who leans hard into the supernatural even in his crime fiction works.
This short book is a superior work in King’s catalog.
“God may be a baseball fan, but not necessarily a Red Sox fan.”
“It’s God’s nature to come on in the ninth inning, especially when bases are loaded and there’s only one out.”
My next post in this series will be Before Hearts of Atlantis which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
Jay's Patreon Page | Purchase Signed Books