Oh, this is great. I loved what you said about the double-play between the sane, comprehensible perception (sometimes real, as in the case of the bear, and sometimes not... quite on that same plane, as when Trisha sees the three figures) and the larger, wilder thing underneath. It's a really good woods story in that way. I don't know if you've read King's short story "The Man in the Black Suit," but he talked about it as being part of the American tradition of "person goes out into the woods and meets the devil," and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon seems to me like the more generous, fuller version of that. Trisha's time in the wilderness brings her face-to-face with things larger than herself, but with good as well as with evil, and she proves able to withstand it all, endure, and even triumph.
Also, and not related at all, while King's sometimes-habit of peppering his novels with characters citing the origins of every homespun expression they use can irritate me, this is one case where that actually really works. Like you said, she's drawing on her memories of her family and friends, and their linguistic tics and her notation of them ends up seeming like one more resource she's hanging onto as a way to give herself company and keep herself sane.
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Date: 2017-01-16 09:15 pm (UTC)Also, and not related at all, while King's sometimes-habit of peppering his novels with characters citing the origins of every homespun expression they use can irritate me, this is one case where that actually really works. Like you said, she's drawing on her memories of her family and friends, and their linguistic tics and her notation of them ends up seeming like one more resource she's hanging onto as a way to give herself company and keep herself sane.