(1999) Stephen King, NEL, pbk, £5.99, 292pp, ISBN 0-340-76559-3
One of King’s quainter tales, though compellingly written. Trisha McFarland gets lost in the woods, and that’s about it really. Over the next week and a half she has to survive on what she finds, keeping her sanity by listening to Red Sox baseball games on her walkman and fantasising about her hero, pitcher Tom Gordon. Stranger things happen in real life, as they say, but the pleasure here is in being capitivated for nearly 300 pages by a story in which, essentially, nothing happens. Now that’s the mark of one hell of a writer. So, if anyone thinks that King has lost it, read this and I guarantee that you’ll change your mind.
Tony Chester
Other Stephen King reviews on this site include: Bag of Bones, Black House, Cell,Wizard and Glass: The Dark Tower 4, The Dark Tower Vol.7, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, Dream Chatcher, Duma Key, Everything's Eventual, From a Buick 8, Lisey’s Story, Song of Susannah and Wolves of the Calla. For other reviews (including more recent King ones) see the fiction reviews index which is alphabetical by author (link below).
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