The Little Friend

It's so beautifully written in vast multi-claused Victorian style sentences--but with a modern balance (no verb hunting).

It's a much more mature novel than The Secret History, with a healthy obsession with death; really, keep an eye out for death and he's everywhere, even apparently appearing physically and making his victims flap at him.

It's set in this odd male-less world, where the men have either died or left, except for the Hulls, who are trying to get in; and even they are associated with death: Hely is present at the cat's funeral and Pemberton is a lifeguard.

There's also a lot of commentary on social class. The Cleves' treatment of Odean is a particular shocker, and indeed, Harriet's choice of Robin's little friend as the show more murderer. She later doesn't remember why she picked him, so it's worth noting it as you read.

I could bang on for ages about all the clever correspondences between the Cleves and the Ratliffs, and the funny scenes scattered through the novel but I shall bow out and let you read the actual book. show less

This is one of the best books ever written, in my humble opinion. Donna Tartt worked on this for 10 years, and the outcome was outstanding and worth the wait. I cannot see this at a book sale without picking it up to give to someone.
The story is a fantastically gothic one of a little girl, raised in the south by her extended family of great-aunts and housekeeper, after the mysterious death of her older brother destroys her own family's will and unity. She resolves that she will find out what happened with her best friend and gets involved in comic and terrible situations.
This book is heartbreaking, frightening, suspenseful, comic, joyous and simply a wonder to read. I wish there were more books written like this!

** SPOILERS **

unlike the secret history and the goldfinch, this one does not have such a satisfying ending - it's open, leaving more questions than answers, lifetimes of uncertainty stretching ahead. but because of that, it's more *real* than her other two books. yes, the misunderstandings are the stuff of fairytales, but it's all so grounded that i never got swept away into fantasy. tartt's child characters are so convincingly young and fully articulated, in a way that no other writer quite manages, i think. and of course, this story is set in the world she grew up in, which makes it all the richer. her writing is gripping as always, but more propulsive and accessible here, i felt. i can see why people like it less than her other two show more books, because it's less pretentious. but to me that just makes it different. she's a master. that's all there is to say. show less

This is an absolutely fabulous read which beams the reader to a hot 1970s summer in Mississippi and the dysfunctional Cleve family. After the murder- unsolved - of their young son, twelve years earlier, the parents have drifted apart. Father lives and works away; mother is absent, distracted - the care of her remaining two daughters falling mainly to the home help, Ida, and her own mother and aunts..elderly, formerly well-to-do southerners. Elder daughter Allison still seems traumatized by the past; and the younger child, Harriet, is on the cusp of adolescence, intelligent, challenging...and determined to spend her holidays finding her brother's killer...
This is emphatically not to be read as a murder mystery- although expect some show more thrilling moments. Tartt does an amazing job at evoking the world of the child becoming an adult. And this is far from a world of gentility, magnolias and mansions, as the seamy side of Mississippi life figures large too, with the criminal Ratliff brothers and their cohorts; meth manufacture, mental illness, snake-handling clergymen...
Other reviewers have commented on the novel's failure to tie up the loose ends and definitively answer the important question....but I don't think that makes it a failure as a story. Harriet is the protagonist; she acts, she sets events in motion, and in life there are not always clear cut answers.
I don't think the cover does this book any favours- featuring a grotesque doll, the reader might imagine a Chucky type horror tale, whereas this is a highly literary, descriptive and classy work.
One you'll never forget. show less

Apparently when planning out this novel Donna Tartt said to herself, "I'm gonna characterize the FUCK out of these people", and so for over 550 pages of the hardcover edition, she did. Imagine a classical music composer largely eschewing melody in the creating of a lengthy symphony, though obligatory nods in that direction are included, but creating a work with astounding orchestral colorization. So it is here with Tartt, plot, and characterization. It will frustrate and annoy many. It did me when I didn't feel quite in the mood for it in these few weeks it took me to go through it, when I was thinking that a melody with a nice hook sure sounded appealing. Having finished it now and with the whole piece in mind, I'm left thinking how show more impressive the achievement is, and what a great talent Tartt has. show less

Six-word review: Wish I'd known plot wouldn't resolve.

Extended review:

Brilliant prose, exceptional characters, vivid setting, gripping scenes, complex plot: how can a story have so many virtues and yet leave me feeling so ill-served?

I invested many hours in reading this 555-page novel, and it wasn't until I actually reached the last page that it dawned on me that the author was going to leave me in ignorance: not just about the plot's driving question but about thread after thread of subplot and secondary character.

That's not what I expected after reading the author's other two novels, and it's not what I expected from the implicit promises of this one.

It may be that that's life; but that's not a satisfying novel.

I'm not going to cite show more passages or quote noteworthy excerpts or praise the themes and motifs and figurative language, although I might have. Instead I'm just going to walk away; but I am going to call back over my shoulder and say, "And besides, you don't know how to conjugate 'lay.'" show less

Nearly every critique of this book is spot on. The plot is thin at best, the end is bizarre and unsatisfying, the depiction of class and poverty is sometimes offensively shallow. Characters and subplots are introduced and then almost immediately dropped. It's like reading just the bits that get cut from an abridged version of a Victor Hugo novel.
However! I really liked it.
I think everyone basically agrees that Donna Tartt does good prose, but I think it's stronger here than in her other novels; the third person serves it well, keeps it a little more grounded than the usual ultra-introspective sad boy thing.
In that respect it resembles more closely her short fiction, both in style and content. In fact I think this one reads (and is show more probably best read—to save it from the meandering dissatisfaction it is as a novel) more like a collection of interrelated stories than as a single novel. You know, not that I'm partial to that form or anything.
The real strength here, though, is the character work. Oh Harriet! What a sad and delightful character. Of course I relate to the weird little girl antics, which are by turns hilarious and horrifying; I'm always surprised how rare girls and women like Harriet are in fiction, given how visible they are in real life (and given how many of them are writers). But it's to Tartt's credit that Harriet feels so much like a whole person, and the later parts of the book, where Harriet is not just a funny precocious unpleasant little girl, where she is overwhelmed and out of her element and her family's real negligence becomes clear, were genuinely moving to me. Which, you know, doesn't usually happen for me.
Anyways. Woof. Writing positive reviews is hard. show less