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The Little Friend
(Audio, 2002)
Other Editions...
Author: Donna Tartt
Donna Tartt's long-awaited second novel (published 10 years after THE SECRET HISTORY) begins with th...
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Details
Synopsis
Donna Tartt's long-awaited second novel (published 10 years after THE SECRET HISTORY) begins with the murder of a 9-year-old boy, which is never solved. Twelve years later, the family is still stunned and bereft, stuck in time--except for Harriet, the boy's younger sister, who is convinced she knows who committed the crime and intends to expose the killer--and perhaps, in the process, some unsavory episodes in her family's history. Set in a small Southern town, THE LITTLE FRIEND is a long, Dickensian novel that also owes a debt to classic 19th-century adventure stories. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.
Industry Reviews
"THE LITTLE FRIEND...turns out to be a far more emotionally resonant novel than its predecessor, and a much less satisfying thriller: awkwardly plotted, if keenly observed, and speckled with glittering set pieces that do not add up to a persuasive whole. It is a kind of changeling creature, neither caterpillar nor moth but something still in chrysalis, waiting to be born. At its best, it attests to the maturation of the author's voice and her willingness to push her gifts in an ambitious new direction....At its worst, it feels like a Frankenstein of a book, a lumpish collection of mismatched parts that even the author's virtuosic talents cannot transform into a coherent whole."
New York Times - Michiko Kakutani (10/17/2002)
"[B]y the time you get to page 543, you're so engrossed in just about everything but the murder that you no longer care who dunnit. And, by that point, you suspect that Tartt doesn't care, either....[THE LITTLE FRIEND] takes the shape of a murder mystery, but it's not really about a death at all. It's about a way of life....The fact that THE LITTLE FRIEND turns out to be quite different from the thriller that the reader...may have expected is a serious flaw. And yet as a novel of Southern manners it succeeds remarkably well....THE LITTLE FRIEND doesn't get where it was headed..., but there's no question that it takes you somewhere worth going."
New Yorker - Daniel Mendelsohn (10/28/2002)
"Her book is a ruthlessly precise reckoning of the world as it is--drab, ugly, scary, inconclusive--filtered through the bright colors and impossible demands of childhood perception. It grips you like a fairy tale, but denies you the consoling assurance that it's all just make-believe....THE LITTLE FRIEND might be described as a young-adult novel for grown-ups, since it can carry us back to the breathless state of adolescent literary discovery, when we read to be terrified beyond measure and, through our terror, to try to figure out the world and our place in it."
New York Times Book Review - A. O. Scott (11/03/2002)
"I can tell you that THE LITTLE FRIEND...is overlong, its writing occasionally precious and its resolution murky; and I can also praise the book's vital characters, its supple conjuring of mood and place, and its dry, dark humor. But I can't explain how it is that this is a novel you sink into, or how Tartt casts her weird spell. I suspect, however, that it has nothing to do with acquired technique or any understanding of real life; no doubt she picked up the knack during a lifetime of obsessive and probably unhealthy reading. Wherever she got it, she sure knows how to write the sort of book that people who want to get lost in a book get lost in.
Salon - Laura Miller (11/11/2002)
"Tartt has lost none of the considerable gifts she displayed in her first novel; she is one of the most mesmerizing writers of her generation....But while THE LITTLE FRIEND contains the framework for many different novels, all of them potentially very good, the book that it actually turns out to be is not entirely satisfactory. A part of the trouble is Tartt's focus on Harriet, who is only vaguely likable at the beginning and grows less and less appealing as the book goes on. This is not entirely Harriet's fault; it is the novel that fails her, not the other way around....Tartt's books are neither simple nor sentimental, and her dark visions...leave a very powerful imprint. But she has not yet figured out how to channel her interest in mortality...into the force that it needs to be for literature."
New Republic - Ruth Franklin (12/30/3003)
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