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 roundtableknight on

4 of 5 stars

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Rating: 3.5 stars
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I've learned through reading all of Donna Tartt's writing that she does something interesting: her books leave the reader with an ambiguous ending. It's quite genius really, because this makes the readers ruminate over her specific word choice and character actions throughout the story. The Little Friend leans on this heavily. And though I love the mystic surrounding her obscure endings, this book I felt was presumptuous on that front; instead of giving the readers at least a crumb of satisfaction of the main plot point, what is left instead is a sense of broken, disjointed parts of a story that don't work well. The story itself is beautifully written, though banal at times, but I do wish that that I hadn't been left feeling as though I missed something in the story that wasn't their to begin with.

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  • Started reading
  • 2 August, 2020: Finished reading
  • 2 August, 2020: Reviewed