Good child hero story, a little like Mark Tidd, but for adults. Girl goes after her brother's killer. Drags a bit, but above average. ( )

A powerful story about a young girl trying to find out why her brother was murdered. As she probes her memory for clues, she tries to piece together what happened....with disastrous results. ( )

i had great expectations after reading "Secret history " which is Donna Tartt's first book ( i think ) but i' m disappointed. The beginning is great and story develops very well but that's it. After one point it seems that nothing is happening and you keep reading and reading. I like that the story is based on mystery but in second part of the book that mystery ( unresolved death of a young boy ) is mentioned very rarely and in the end nothing is resolved. It's written very good but storyplot could be better. ( )

Whodunit? Who knows!! Every time it got my juices flowing with anticipation, things just stopped. Beautifully written, but poor plot. ( )

The Little Friend doesn't seem to have attracted as much positive critical acclaim as Tartt's The Secret History, but it contains the same elements that made the latter a success: absorbing, vividly painted characters, a slow moving but tightly crafted plot, and archetypal timeless American settings.

Harriet has been raised largely by her grandmother and great aunts while her mother gracefully slips into a drug induced haze brought on by the death of Harriet's brother when she was a baby. 12 years later, Harriet resolves to solve the mystery of his death, and becomes caught up in the small town criminal underworld of the deep south.

Harriet does a good job of portraying Harriet's rather intense worldview, but I was more taken with the other characters, Harriet's grandmother and aunts, and the criminal dregs of Ratcliff family. I didn't feel Tartt's leisurely pacing in describing their thoughts and feelings fit well with the murder mystery story of Harriet's quest, and I suspect this may be one of the causes of other readers' dissatisfaction with the book: the slow plot makes the book hard going if you're not interested in the minor characters. The resolution is also a little ambiguous: I'm fairly sure I see what happened to Harriet's brother, but reading online it seems many readers disagree! There are also elements I don't quite understand - I really don't see the significance of Harriet's sister, for example.

For me, The Little Friend is worth reading as a social commentary. The casual racism and petty-mindedness could make for a depressing read, but as with The Secret History somehow Tartt succeeds in leaving the reader uplifted. ( )