Customer Reviews

The Little Friend

5 star:		(107)
4 star:		(90)
3 star:		(91)
2 star:		(135)
1 star:		(186)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Since "the little friend" came out in Belgium september 14th, we could read it here about a month before the people in the USA.
Having loved "History", I was excited to read the new novel. Let there be no mistake, it is beautifully written, in the same hard worked-on style, with sentences of 20 lines (and more), with amazingly good observations and characters that are very well developed.
But, I'm affraid the book will stay on the shelves, half read, because, in my case, the characters don't interess me, I don't give a damn about what happens to them.
Sorry, I wish my English was better to express what I feel, but it comes over to me as if the novel is too polished, all raw edges are gone and what is left is "belleterie" with beautiful descriptions of nature and time and clothing and furniture and...
But what about the involvment with what happens to the people in the book? Frankly the story doesn't grab me by the throat,(nor anywhere else, for that matter) and aren't a good story and strong characters the most important things a good book needs?

I have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new novel by Donna Tartt for ten years. I bought the Secret History the first week it was out and have since worn out three subsequent copies. I reread the book at least 4-6 times yearly and never fail to be entranced and drawn in by the intensity of the story and luminosity of the characters. It is therefore not surprising that anything less in a follow up book would be a dissapointment. The sad truth is that The Little Friend is mediocre at best. While not poorly written, it feels that Tartt is stetching to fill page after page with endless discription and her action scenes lack any vibrancy at all. The characters are dull, shallow portraits of people with little substance behind them, and it is difficult to maintain interest in them. Throughout the book I kept feeling like she was trying to lead up to a main point, but by the end of the book we still hadn't reached it. The ending was particularly dissapointing, because after reading 555 pages of overblown prose I expected at least some sort of closure. I actually thought perhaps someone had removed the last few pages of the book, as it ended so abruptly and leaving the story (to my mind at least) unfinished. The Little Friend felt contrived, and artifical, and I am dissapointed. I am glad I read it but I will not be rereading it. If nothing else, at least it reminded me of what a gem Tartt's first work truly was.

the only reason i finished the book was because i KNEW, just KNEW that she (Tartt) wouldn't let me down.. however, i was wrong.. "the secret history" is my favorite book and i really can't believe how different "the little friend" turned out to be.. there's none of the same magic.. and it's definitely NOT a page turner.. on the contrary, i could barely stay awake reading it.. i'm sorely disappointed and hope that Tartt will try again and redeem herself..

I'm likely one of the few reviewers here that has not read "The Secret History" (I still intend to). Perhaps that is a good thing, as I approached the "The Little Friend" with no pre-conceived notions about Ms Tartt's ability to write. I am left with no doubt about her ability to write, and write and write and therein lies part of the problem. This book could easily have been trimmed by a couple of hundred pages, and likely been far better for it. I have no problem with detail, but copious quantities of it that seem to have no purpose other than to fill the page... well that just seems like a lot of filler to me. Another reviewer said this book kept putting them to sleep, and I confess I had the same reaction, usually I'm good for hours of steady reading, with this one 20 minutes and my eyelids were drooping, not a good sign. When a book is over 500 pages in length it better be able to hold my attention, this one did not. I never cared for any of the characters, even Harriet our protagonist got on my nerves. So readers, I'm with the consensus on this one, not a stellar work on any level.

I think a lot of readers have approached this book expecting to read (a) a mystery that is wrapped up neatly at the end or (b) a follow-up to _The Secret History_. This book should not be read as a mystery. It is, instead, a vivid coming-of-age novel about a little girl in the South of the 1970s. As a Southerner who grew up in a town that was very similar to Alexandria, Mississippi, I can vouch for the accuracy of Tartt's portrayal. It's all there: the crazy extended families (all living nearby and constantly in each other's business), the Pentecostal preachers, the Baptist church camp, the tangled and conflicted ways that black people and white people relate to each other.

This novel follows in the tradition of great Southern writers like Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and Ellen Gilchrist.

After the success of her first book, Donna Tartt did something I rather admire. She rested on her laurels, travelled, lived in London and Paris, bought a farm. . . so many writers follow up impressive debuts with rushed, second rate novels (Irvine Walsh, Zadie Smith et al) that it's nice to see someone taking their time.

But in her second book, Tartt gives us too much of a good thing. The novel is brimming with breathtaking prose which effortlessly evokes the joys and terrors of childhood and life in the deep South. The characters are more realistic than the venal classics students of the Secret History, but less romantic and less defined - the aunts personalities seem to swim into each other. And although every scene is a small masterpiece, many of them are redundant, adding to the mood of the book, but not the plot.
Tartt has made fun of authors who write about 'trouble with the housekeeper', but the black maid moving to Florida is, sadly, one of the major plot points of 'The Little Friend.' The family cat dying is another. As the saying goes, a good writer has to kill their darlings, and there are literally hundreds of pages of incidental incidents in the Little Friend which only exist for the sake of themselves.

There is, happily, no feel good ending, but in many respects, there is no ending at all, merely a climax and exposition.
Tartt finishes the book but not the story. The final pages, I suspect, were rewritten hundreds of times, until she finally gave up and published the ending she found the least disappointing.

Still, Donna Tartt has done something new and different, and from any other author the Little Friend would be an incredible achievement - although if any other author had presented this to a publisher they would have been told to trim twenty percent and rewrite the ending again.

This novel was a huge disappointment, especially since it's been described as a masterpiece in the literary media. While well written the descriptive passages run on too long. Little Harriet Defresnes is out to solve her brother's murder but the authors spends an inordinant amount of time exploring the personality quirks Harriet's relatives. At the end of 555 pages we still don't know who murdered 9 year old Robin Dufresnes so what was the point of even reading this book? For the cover price it'd be nice to see the mystery solved or have a little closure. Instead we're left with an unsolved murder and a family that is even more dysfunctional than it was in Chapter one. Over all, reading this book was waste of time.