Little Friend [Hardcover]

Donna Tartt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 2002

Although the Cleves generally revelled in every detail of their family history, the events of 'the terrible Mother's Day' were never, ever discussed. On that day, nine-year-old Robin Cleves, loved by all for his whims and peculiarities, was found hanging by the neck from a rope slung over a black-tupelo tree in his own garden. Eleven years later, the mystery - with its taunting traces of foul play - was no nearer a solution than it had been on the day it happened.This isn't good enough for Robin's youngest sister Harriet. Only a baby when the tragedy occurred, but now twelve-years-old and steeped in the adventurous daring of favourite writers such as Stevenson, Kipling and Conan Doyle, Harriet is ready and eager to find and punish her brother's killer. Her closest friend Hely - who would try anything to make Harriet love him - has sworn allegiance to her call for revenge. But the world these plucky twelve-year-olds are to encounter has nothing to do with child's play: it is dark, adult and all too menacing. In Donna Tartt's Mississippi, the sense of place and sense of the past mingle redolently with rich human drama to create a collective alchemy. Here eccentric great aunts bustle about graciously despite faded fortunes and a child's inquiring mind not only unearths telling family artefacts, but stirs up a neighbourhood nest of vipers and larceny. THE LITTLE FRIEND is a profoundly involving novel which demonstrates how the imaginary life embraces what literature we read, what special places we inhabit and what kindred souls we recognize, to help crack open even the darkest secrets life has hiding for us.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Donna Tartt is a novelist, essayist and critic.Her first novel, THE SECRET HISTORY, has been published in twenty-three languages.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing; 1ST edition (October 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375434976
• ISBN-13: 978-0375434976
• ASIN: 0747562113
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (609 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,005,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars great characters, great writing, but missing plot, November 9, 2002

By 

sandynyc "sandynyc" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Little Friend (Hardcover)

Donna Tartt has certainly not lost her craft, in The Little Friend, she proves herself to be a great writer. I enjoy her writing style and I didn't find the book boring...but it was ultimately frustrating.
Her ability to draw such realistic and compelling characters, especially Harriet, is impressive. Personally, I loved Harriet. I found her realistic and engaging.
The main problem is that the book is overly long, not a whole lot happens, the minimal plot is not particularly suspenseful or dramatic, and the ending is puzzling--what are we supposed to take away from this well-written book about a compelling young woman? While I like novels with more open-ended ideas, I was ultimately left feeling empty, not inquisitive.
I can appreciate Donna Tartt's writing, and Harriet managed to get under my skin, but the novel as a whole, didn't do it for me.

137 of 154 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Modern Southern Gothic, November 15, 2002

By 

Miguel "Writer, Journalist, Film Critic" (Gijon, Spain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Little Friend (Hardcover)

I don't understand what's the matter. There seems to be a rampant boycott going on about this novel, but I must say I find it ridiculous. All the naysayers are calling this book boring and the author racist.

Come on!

The book is set in the summer of 1970, and it should be noted that the social climate is captured with pitch-perfect ear. Harriet is a very well developed character and on her back she carries the whole weight of this engrossing, captivating and mysterious narrative, populated by eccentric characters and bizarre situations. Through her eyes we see how life can change in the blink of an eye. The horror of discovering the truth beneath the lies we have come to believe staunchly results in a chilling climax.

Maybe I will be stoned by all the readers who don't like this book or don't get it. Anyhow, Donna Tartt's voice resounds long after closing the final pages. And it does what not many novels can: it can make you laugh and shudder sometimes in the same chapter, and that IS the purpose of the novel: it transports you to a place you had not been before, to the skin of someone else, and for a moment, you are Harriet Cleves Dufresnes and live through her, the darkest, most significant summer of her life.

81 of 90 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Disappointing Second Novel, October 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Little Friend (Hardcover)

By way of background, I graduated from Ole Miss, which Tartt attended before transferring to Bennington college in Vermont, fictionalized as "Hampden College" in her first novel, "The Secret History." Way back when TSH first came out, I noticed a stack of signed copies in Square Books on the Oxford, Mississippi square, and bought a copy. I was absolutely mesmerized by the book, and read it in basically one long, continuous sitting over the course of a weekend. I thought it was the best book I'd ever read, and to this day I still count it among the best books I've read. I've given copies of TSH as gifts numerous times over the intervening years, and I've recommended it even more frequently.

Thus, it was with great excitement that I awaited the publishing of Donna Tartt's second novel. I couldn't believe that, after the phenomenal success of TSH, she was taking as long as she was to write her second book, and several times over the years I went to the Internet to try to wade through the many conflicting rumors as to when her next book might arrive. I read the initial reviews of "The Little Friend," which were not very positive, with skepticism, and I hoped very much that they were inaccurate.

Having read the TLF, however, I am very, very disappointed to report that the reviews were, in fact, accurate, and that "The Little Friend" is not even in the same league with "The Secret History."

The primary problem with TLF from my perspective is that it is, in places, boring. Mind numbingly, excruciatingly boring. By the end of the first 100 pages, you have the gist of the plot down and, unfortunately, can also anticipate its resolution. However, Ms. Tartt spends the next 300 pages going into so much detail about the daily affairs of the protagonist, Harriet, and her friend, Hely, their families, etc., that I was literally looking ahead in the book wondering when the pace would pick up. I read a lot, and I have very rarely put a book down without finishing it, but I have to say that I was tempted to do so with this book. I assume that this middle section of the book was intended to fully develop the characters - which it does, but I never found myself caring for or even really liking the characters. My basic attitude throughout the bulk of the book was "let's get this over with so I can move on to read something else" - and at 550+ pages, it's not a short book.

To be fair, the ending is a little more interesting, and there are some fairly novel twists thrown in. Ms. Tartt is a very gifted writer, and there are sections of this book that are beautifully written, but they are like diamonds scattered in the rough that is the boring bulk of this book. Despite the nine years between TSH and TLF, TLF feels as if it was sloppily written and edited - there are several noticeable grammatical errors and redundancies in descriptive language. (For example, on page 82: "In their midst sat Mrs. Godfrey, glassy-eyed, who sat eating ice cream from the harlequin-patterned dish." How many "sat"s do we need? Or, on only the second page of the prologue, page 4 of the book: ". . . the memory of that day's events had a chaotic, fragmented quality, bright mirror-shards of nighmare which flared at the smell of wisteria . . ." and then, in the very next sentence: "Sometimes, these vivid flashes of memory seemed like pieces of a bad dream, . . ." Why use "nightmare" in one sentence and "bad dream" in the second? We get the point. These sections read like a first draft that was never properly edited.) It's almost like Ms. Tartt had too much time - because this seems to me like a 250-page novel that has been stretched into a 550+-page novel.

If you want to read breathtakingly beautiful descriptive passages, read "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. If you want to read a modern Southern gothic, read the amazing "The Heaven of Mercury" by Brad Watson.

I am sorry to have to write a negative review of this book - especially since I loved "The Secret History" so much and waited so eagerly for the publication of "The Little Friend," but this is my honest opinion. Nonetheless, I'll still be looking out for her next book, hoping that it is more like TSH than TLF.