| The Gingerbread Girl | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen King
Creator: Mare Winningham
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.06
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Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 34931
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio CD
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7 x 5.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0743571185
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780743571180
ASIN: 0743571185
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: 100% Brand New! - Ships Today! Identical to Amazon's book in every way. Flawless! Not a cheap Remainder or Book Club Copy! *We recommend Expedited Shipping option for much faster mail delivery
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Product Description
In the emotional aftermath of her baby's sudden death, Em starts running. Soon she runs from her husband, to the airport, down to the Florida Gulf and out to the loneliest stretch of Vermillion Key, where her father has offered the use of a conch shack he has kept there for years. Em keeps up her running -- barefoot on the beach, sneakers on the road -- and sees virtually no one. This is doing her all kinds of good, until one day she makes the mistake of looking into the driveway of a man named Pickering. Pickering also enjoys the privacy of Vermillion Key, but the young women he brings there suffer the consequences. Will Em be next?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Running for her life December 20, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This novella from Stephen King is available only in audio, read very effectively by Mare Winningham. We already know that King can do amazing things with the novella and short story formats, and here he delivers his usual stylish writing. If you are willing to accept terror rather than horror as the genre, then The Gingerbread Girl will keep you absorbed for its two-hour running time.
The title character, Emily, runs to get away from the pain of a dead baby and a failing marriage. She leaves her home with nothing but a credit card and the clothes she has on. Taking refuge in her father's beach house in the Florida Keys, she runs in the off-season solitude. One day she finds a house occupied, sees a dead girl in the trunk of a car - and is abducted by a mad serial killer. Em winds up running for her life.
Em, the killer, and the steamy beauty of the island are the main elements in this tale. The plot may not be full of surprises but it parlays a somewhat predictable story into two hours of tension. Neither Em nor the knife-wielding stalker are as fully developed as a novel would permit, but when Stephen King's in charge, you know you're in for some good stuff. Like the gingerbread man who jumped off the pan and ran out the door, Em is running to save her life. Will she meet the same tragic end as the gingerbread man? You'll have to listen for yourself to find out.
Linda Bulger, 2008
 Catch Me if You Can November 25, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Stephen King's short story, The Gingerbread Girl, appeared in Esquire magazine in July 2007 and was published this year as one of the stories in King's Just After Sunset collection. It has also been released as a standalone two-disc, roughly two-hour, audio book narrated by Mare Winningham, the version of the story that I recently experienced.
Emily, a young woman whose marriage has begun to fall apart after the crib death of her only baby, is the "Gingerbread Girl" of the book's title. Searching for a way to maintain her sanity after the tragic loss of her child, she soon becomes obsessed with her daily runs, extends them to longer and longer distances and, in the process, convinces her husband that she has become mentally unstable. When a minor spat with her husband suddenly flares into something more serious, Emily hits the door and literally runs right out of her husband's life.
Taking a page from the fairy tale Gingerbread Man's book ("Run, run as fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man."), Emily depends on her legs to outrun her troubles and conflicts. She will soon learn, however, that running in the wrong direction can be more dangerous than not running at all.
Emily retreats to her father's little beach house on Florida's remote Vermillion Key where she is content in her aloneness and continues to add to the mileage she is capable of running. All goes well and one day she is surprised to find herself ready to invite her father to join her in the Keys for a few days. But then, despite having been warned by her only friend on the island that one of the wealthy homeowners has arrived with another of his "nieces" and that she should avoid the man, Emily lets curiosity get the best of her and practically runs into the arms of a serial killer.
At this point, The Gingerbread Girl can only hope that her legs will be able to save her from becoming the killer's next victim. Since she is trapped on a very small island, that might not be as easy as it sounds even for a trained runner like Emily.
Mare Winningham's presentation helps make Emily into a comfortably believable character, a woman suffering terribly and unable to express that pain to anyone who might be able to help her grieve. She is by far the most complete character in the story, especially when contrasted with the man chasing her, a character that remains a stereotypical villain to the end. It could be that the limitations of the short story format kept King from more fully developing his killer, but that failure kept me from reaching the tension level that I have come to expect from a Stephen King thriller. I suspect that this one would have made a better novel than short story.
 The rare just-ok ending not worth the tedious ride. October 27, 2008
A great reader does not a great audiobook make.
This one has a fine narrator, but few people pick up King stories for their narrators alone. You go to him for engaging, character-strong stories with bad endings that are somehow still worth the ride. Unfortunately, this one's ending is okay but the ride is unbearable. Way too much navel-gazing here before the real story and more-than-anyone-needs micromanagement of the lead character's physical dilemmas.
You could skip this retread ("Gerlad's Game" at one-tenth the length and half the genuine suspense) and not have missed a beat.
Good voice Acting, Average Story October 20, 2008
This novella is read by Mare Winningham who did a great job with King's Lisey's Story. She does the same here, so the reading is professional and top notch. Now the story is another matter. It is a well told story; fleshed out, believable, and the character is developed to the usual high standards by King. But, it's a story that has been told before a thousand times, a woman character abducted by a psychopath. As a result it just wasn't that exciting for a thriller story.
It tells of a woman after losing her child in birth, starts to run to escape, and eventually she runs away from her husband and settles on her fathers beach vacation home. While prodding her future with her husband she jogs every day on the beach, until one day she jogs past a house with a body in the back of a trunk. She gets abducted by the psychopath and tied up. And she must escape as usual. The running theme is used throughout this story, as it applies to this woman and she uses it in her situation with her abductor.
This wasn't a bad story, but I've read too many of these similar in style stories to garner any excitement over this tale.
Missed Opportunities October 20, 2008
I loved Stephen King before it was cool to love Stephen King. I've ridden this roller coaster from _Carrie_ to the present. There have been high points, and there have been low points, but like any charter member of the "constant reader" club, I stay strapped in, waiting for the next big hill. _The Gingerbread Girl_ isn't it.
This is a short novel of a young woman, Em, who takes up running after the loss of a child. Once again, Stephen King excels at creating believable and fleshed-out characters, but once again it falls short on the "horror factor". This novel is very similar to _Lizey's Story_, another woman who is pursued by a psycho following the unexpected death of a loved one. At one point, and sadly, only one, when said psycho begins speaking to an invisible accomplice, and it looks like we're going to get a touch of _Blaze_ blended in as well. It looks like we're going to have a psycho who isn't just nuts. However, like the demon in the closet early in _Cujo_, Psycho's inner voice is never referred to again, the haunting presence as well as a wonderful opportunity to kick the horror up a notch, is discarded.
Not to be prudish, but while I understand the need for colorful language in dialogue, because that's just the way some people speak, I am really at a loss why a description of a setting needs the same treatment. It seems lazy. Like the right word is out there somewhere, but this one will do.
That being said, King is still capable of occasionally leaving you speechless. "Donning wax wings on a sunny day" is masterful writing, and there are jewels like this peppered throughout the novel. He can make you laugh or cry or scare the "hoohaa" out of you. It's just been such a long time since he's done the latter. It's a good story, and he does a good job telling it, but if you want to read great Stephen King, pick up _It_ or _The Stand_.
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