The Little Friend by Donna Tartt

The Little Friend

by Donna Tartt

In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dusfrenes grows up haunted by the murder of her brother, who was found hanging from a tree in their yard when she was just a baby. Robin's killer was never identified, and the family has never recovered from the tragedy. Harriet's father mostly absent, her mother incapacitated by grief, and her teenage sister unable to recall what she saw that terrible day. Harriet lives largely in the world of her imagination, alone even in company, obsessed by Robin who is a link to the happier past she knows from stories and photographs. And then one summer, the year she turns twelve, Harriet decides to find his murderer and exact his revenge. Even more transfixing than its predecessor, "The Little Friend" is a dark novel of lost childhood, breathtaking in its ambition and power, rich in moral paradox and profound insights into human frailty.

Reviewed by clementine on

4 of 5 stars

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First of all, if you are considering picking this book up based on the blurb on the back, be aware that it is such a bait and switch. The blurb makes it sound like literary Gillian Flynn: a dark southern murder mystery with more than a dash of familial dysfunction. But, no, it is not about who killed Robin Cleve Dufresnes, so don't expect to get any closure in that regard. Rather, it is about his now twelve-year-old sister Harriet's dogged and kind of crazy plan to get revenge on the man who she thinks killed Robin.

Now, I did like the book despite it not being about what I thought it was going to be about. It was incredibly dark and immersive, two qualities which I love in a novel. The entire sprawling plot, all the richly-drawn characters, the intertwining stories - I enjoyed these things. And while the length of The Goldfinch didn't bother me, personally, I felt that here a bit more. I was all for it until about page 500, at which point I was like, "SURELY some of these lush descriptions could be sacrificed." Sometimes it's just a bit wandering. And I can stomach that, to a certain extent - I never felt like I was slogging through it. But I was much more aware of specific passages where I was like, "Okay, realistically, we don't need this." Like, I enjoyed a lot of these passages. Donna Tartt can write, that's for sure, and it's a pleasure to read paragraphs that are about nothing. But, well, they're still about nothing. And when your book is 624 pages long, maybe we could use slightly fewer paragraphs about nothing.

This novel is really two things at once. There's the main plot, which, let's be honest, advances rather slowly sometimes. And there's also the portrait of a dysfunctional but loving family that was once much more well-to-do than it is now. (And, I supposed, the portrait of the very dysfunctional family that has never been well-to-do and is in fact made up of meth-addicted hillbillies.) I liked both parts. But if you want a novel that cuts to the chase and just tells a damn good story, this is not the one. There is so much of it that is deeply human, detailed in a highly unusual - and, to me, enjoyable - way, but which has absolutely nothing to do with the driving force - Harriet's plan to get back at Danny Ratliff. All the stuff with summer camp, the aunts' trip, Ida? None of that is strictly necessary to tell that story. But this novel is not just that story. I think if you resign yourself to that fact, it is a much more enjoyable read. If you just want the main plot, well, you're asking it to be a book that it is not and never set out to be.

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