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Jesters_folly (230 KP) rated The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon in Books

Dec 29, 2020  
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
Stephen King | 1999 | Fiction & Poetry, Horror, Thriller
9
7.4 (25 Ratings)
Book Rating
I'd never heard of this Stephen King novel before but that's the joys of charity shops. The blurb on the back book didn't give much away and going into any King book blind can be a bit of a gamble, will it be horror, dark tower related, Shining related or some kind of hybrid. Oddly 'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon' doesn't necessarily fit into any of these category's.
Set in Mane (Like a lot of Kings works.) 'The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon' follows 9 year old Trisha McFarland as she gets lost in the wood whilst on a hike with her mother and brother. The story is more about coping with horror than an actual horror story as Trisha tries to find her way out of the woods whilst having to contend with the changing landscape, dead animals, hunger, thirst and exposure. Oh and there may or may not be something stalking her and that's the real extent of the horror, the 'not knowing' what's out there. There is no 'Dark man' or plague and no one has any shine, the story is just a little girl trying to find her way home. King mix's the real threats with those of Trisha's imagination , blurring the line so that, by the end the reader is not sure what really happened. Pushed to her limits Trisha is forced to dwell on the nature of god(s) and whether she should wait for a miracle or try to save her self .
Overall a good book that is slightly different to Kings other works and, at just over 200 pages (the copy I read) it's a refreshingly quick read
  
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ClareR (5950 KP) rated Hamnet in Books

Sep 26, 2020  
Hamnet
Hamnet
Maggie O'Farrell | 2020 | Fiction & Poetry
10
8.4 (5 Ratings)
Book Rating
I think this has probably made it to the top of my favourite books of the year. How can this possibly be topped by anything else?

Hamnet is an imagining of what could have happened to Shakespeare’s son - even in the parish records it doesn’t say what his cause of death was. Maggie O’Farrell makes this version completely plausible though: plague should have been a real threat at this time. It killed indiscriminately: young and old, rich and poor, weak and strong. They were all vulnerable to illnesses with no cures. I’m something of an emotional reader at the best of times, but as Agnes, Hamnet’s mother, was preparing her son for burial, I was crying in to my breakfast. My 16 year old son looked at me over the top of his bacon butty and said:”Another sad bookthen, Mum?”, and shook his head. To read of a mother and her dead son, and see my 13 and 16 year old sons merrily tucking in to their bacon sandwiches, may not have been the ideal time to be reading this.

This is the kind of book that makes you really look at how precarious life was in those times, and how lucky we are today to have so few worries on this scale (Covid-19 aside!).

The writing is so beautiful, so descriptive and emotive: it picks you up and sets you down squarely in Elizabethan Stratford, making you feel exactly how Agnes must have felt. Honestly, it broke my heart to read of her pain.

If you haven’t read this yet, you’re in for a treat. This deserves ALL the awards.