The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Phil: A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d read Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King and not exactly been impressed. A couple of commentators pointed me in the direction of a longer novel, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, suggesting that it would be a better read.

My local Oxfam bookshop had a copy on the shelf so I picked it for a very reasonable £3.49. Nice clean hardback with no annoying scribble.

At 213 page, it’s not a long book. The story is handily divided into chapters too, which makes reading in several sessions easy. I hate taking a break part way through a passage but some writers don’t give you a point to pause at. Never mind how good the text is, sometimes a tea break is required! As it was, I read this in two sessions.

The story concerns a young girl (Trisha McFarland) who gets lost in the woods. Tom Gordon is a baseball player who appears in the book, but not really. I can’t say much more without runing the story.

I’ll admit to being impressed. For the overwhelming majority of the book there is only one character. In some hands, this would be a problem as the narrative would become leaden. Here, the story makes progress and you really want to make it to the end. In this respect, the length of the novel is an advantage. I doubt the tension could have been sustained any longer without introducing silly events. As it is, the build is entirely psychological and most importantly, very realistic. There’s been some painstaking research gone into the woodland setting. Some serious map-based planning too. If you were minded, I expect that you too could follow this book in real life.

Enjoyable? Yes, it was. I managed to avoid reading the end but it was tempting. I’m glad I didn’t as that would have spoilt things. As it was, the dénouement worked perfectly and tied everything up perfectly satisfactory.

Daddy’s Girls by Tasmina Perry

Candice: Opens ‘ A stylish group of four figures walks into the room, though they are sister’s, each one has a unique style and stance.’

And that is the front cover of this book.  However, the back tells a different story…

‘But money doesn’t buy you love.  When their aristocratic and tyrannical father is found dead, the finger of suspicion points towards the glamorous daughters…’

So, how far into the book are you expecting the father’s death, first page, 10 pages in?  How about around 500.  Unfortunately, all though I enjoyed this book I kept stopping at certain points to read the back and check what I was reading.  Yes, it definitely says the Dad dies, ok must be in the next section… and on and on I read.  It’s a bit like knowing the ending or in my case, waiting for the scene I filmed to be shown.  (In fact, when I did Line of Duty last year I spent the whole series going “where’s the car chase?” – last scene…)

So, back to the start with this book, what is the premise?  Four glamorous sisters (well that’s a given) who all have different personalities; one an actress, one a journalist, another a lawyer and one a downtrodden wife (with her own clothing line, of course).  Their lives intertwine as they fall in and out with each other and try to discover themselves.  The father is the tyrant that they love to hate but who drives them on to be who they are.  Along the way there are affairs, pregnancies and of course, the odd undiscovered scandal.  The whole story runs along quite well, and without the distraction of when is Dad dying, I would have really enjoyed it.

It’s funny that Phil and I have been criticised for having too many characters in our writing.  But it this case I think there were too many protagonists.  Each sister could have her own book as they all have their own story and I would have liked to follow each one.  In fact, that would be similar to Cat as there are other books by Freya North about Cat’s sisters. Hey, perhaps we should write those four stories and we have our own equivalent to fifty shades fan fiction!

All in all and good sunbed read – so good that when I went back to my favourite charity shop there was another book by Tasmina, so I’ve picked that up for next holiday!