Helpful Score: 10
Although Tartt has a gift for writing and a gift for creating likeable and intelligent characters (Harriet, Ida Rhew, etc.), the plot didn't grab me until about 400 pages in. The climax occurred, but there was no resolution of which to speak. This novel was a disappointment in many ways.
Helpful Score: 8
Really? A novel based on an unsolved crime, that after 600 pages never tells who did it? If you're looking to be really pissed of at the end of a long book, search no more,this is it. On the other hand it's very well written. Total waste of superb skills.
Helpful Score: 6
I have to be honest, I could not finish this book. The characters were interesting, but nothing happened in the plot! After about 250 pages, I gave up. You might enjoy her first book, "A Secret History" more.
Helpful Score: 5
Could not get into this book, it seemed to drag on forever. Other people in my office book club loved it, though.
Helpful Score: 5
Good book but bad ending....I liked this book until the end as it did not resolve the whole basis of the story....too bad as it is a long book.
Helpful Score: 3
I loved this writer's "A Secret History". However, "The Little Friend" was disappointing. It was at least one third too long, full of filler, and badly in need of editing. Most of the characters were stereotypes of the southern middle and poor white South.The brave, feisty, smart little girl has appeared in dozens of novels. I missed the originality of the first book. The reader was led to believe that Harriet was obsessed with solving the murder of her older brother, Robin. After myriad hair raising misadventures, the book ends with the reader no wiser. Will the mystery be solved in a sequel?
Helpful Score: 2
The story itself was captivating, the characters interesting, but as is my experience with her other books it started much stronger than it finished. This time I was actually quite disappointed with the ending. Not sure if it's worth the read.
Helpful Score: 2
In parts of this book, I realized I was actually holding my breath, it was so suspenseful. It's an intriguing, at times dark, story line that keeps you wanting more. As intricate a story as her first novel, The Secret History, and again with unique three-dimensional characters. I highly recommend this book; it will suck you in and take you into a fascinating world for 300 pages.
Helpful Score: 2
Deep thinking about the "southern way of life" - thought provoking. Good for Book Club discussions.
Helpful Score: 2
I expected more of this book. It leads one to believe there is a mystery to be solved, but the book is about a kid's life in a Mississippi town in the 70s. It is very long and really drags on in many places. I read to the end only to find what happened to the brother and who was responsible, but it just ends with none of these questions answered. A huge disappointment.
Helpful Score: 2
Beautifully written, but the ending didn't quite fulfill my hopes for the book. Worth reading anyway.
Helpful Score: 1
Not as phenomenal as Tartt's "The Secret History" but still a great book. Very intriguing, very beautiful, and very, very well written.
I loved her previous book, The Secret History and this one is also superb. Oddly dark comedy
Helpful Score: 1
I did not like this book. It left me with the feeling that nothing put forth in the plot was resolved - the book merely ended on a sour note. I felt cheated! Her other book (Secret History) was much, much better.
Helpful Score: 1
One of my all-time favorite books. Readable and intelligent, the author has empathy and insight into the heady surrealism of childhood. Read this.
Helpful Score: 1
I thought this was a great book. It wasn't quite up to the caliber of The Secret History, her previous book but i would give it 4 stars. I was absorbed as soon as I opened the book. A mystery that will keep you on edge and envelope you in its strange pull.
Helpful Score: 1
Disjointed - wordy and unnecessary narrative - "scattered" - no conclusion - left hanging which didn't make any sense on why she even brought them up.
Helpful Score: 1
A strange tale that starts out like a murder mystery, but ends up in self discovery. It has a hillbilly, backward feeling set in today's world of methlabs almost next door to middle-class neighborhoods.
Helpful Score: 1
12 yr old Harriet's brother was killed years ago and now she's going to find his killer. Characters in this story are incredibly well written. The plot line will grab you - the book's terrific!
Helpful Score: 1
I didn't enjoy the story as much as I loved _The Secret History,_ but I adore Tartt's writing style. It's a worthy sophomore effort.
Helpful Score: 1
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.
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.
Helpful Score: 1
I would read & recommend any book written by Donna Tartt; she is a true talent, one of the most impressive American writers on the scene today. I'm simply amazed at her ability to invoke the atmosphere of such different geographical regions of our great country as California, Vermont, and Mississippi -- each with love and insight.
Loved her first book The Secret History but struggled with this one. HAs had great reviews by the professionals though.
Donna Tartt is one of the most unique and talented writers I have had the pleasure of reading! Her words are complexed and nuanced without feeling unapproachable.
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While The Goldfinch is still one of my all-time favorite novels, and my favorite novel by Donna Tartt, The Little Friend does not disappoint!
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She elegantly weaves her words to paint a vivid story of a young girl, in a small southern town, who is trying to solve the mystery surrounding the murder of her little brother.
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The supporting characters (including a family of meth dealers, her grief-stricken and barely functioning mother, her stern grandmother, her wacky aunts, and her sidekick best friend) come to life in such a way that you can not only picture them in your mind but you feel like you personally know them.
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It is a slower-paced and lengthly novel that is to be savored by just allowing it to flow at its own pace!
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While The Goldfinch is still one of my all-time favorite novels, and my favorite novel by Donna Tartt, The Little Friend does not disappoint!
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She elegantly weaves her words to paint a vivid story of a young girl, in a small southern town, who is trying to solve the mystery surrounding the murder of her little brother.
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The supporting characters (including a family of meth dealers, her grief-stricken and barely functioning mother, her stern grandmother, her wacky aunts, and her sidekick best friend) come to life in such a way that you can not only picture them in your mind but you feel like you personally know them.
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It is a slower-paced and lengthly novel that is to be savored by just allowing it to flow at its own pace!
The writing is beautiful. If you aren't a southerner, you will quickly get the feel of the place just from Tartt's descriptive passages. The characters, especially our heroine, a pre-teen girl obsessed with what may be the murder of her brother when he was 9 yrs old, are sharply drawn. Each of the old aunts, who initially seem to be just little old ladies, become their very own character with gripping life stories. I read 616 pages breathless to see what would eventually play out. She is quite an adventurous child, willful and quick-witted, and some life-changing events take place as she begins to grow up. But - at page 617 - we begin to resolve things. And I won't spoil the story other to say that 'resolving things' must mean something different to the author than it does to me.
Haunting and beautiful. Transports you to a distant Southern summer full of boredom and adventure. Although not as enthralling as Tartt's other novels The Little Friend is still worth the read.
A little slow reading for me. Too much insignificant details. Not sure I would buy another Donna Tartt book.
Not as good as Sec ret History but still a page-turner. off-beat story.
Normally, I don't like bizarre books but I could not put this down.
Excellent read.
Very well written
Though this book is well written, it is very hard to follow. I've tried to read it twice, and only made it as far as 130 pgs. According to other reviewers, the big mystery is still not solved after 611 pages, so I have abandoned my effort.
A Southern novel-carefully written and very enjoyable.
well written, but I didnt like the ending
I really liked this book a lot. Nice to see a young girl as the main character. Also I love books about the south, and this is set in Mississippi. Donna Tartt is a great writer.
In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dufresnes grows up in the shadow of her brother, who - when she was only a baby - was found hanging dead from a .. tree in their yard. Now tweleve, and fiercely determined, she resolves one summer to solve the murder nd exact her revenge. What she and her friend Hely encounter has nothing to do with child's play. It explores crime and punishment.
Could not put it down!
The setting is Alexandria, MI, where one Mother's Day a little boy named Robin Cleve Dufresnes was found hanging from a tree in his parents' yard. Twelve years later Robin's murder is still unsolved and his family remains devastated. So it is that Robin's sister Harriet- unnervingly bright, insufferably determined, and unduly influenced by the fiction of Kipling and Robert Luis Stevenson- sets out to unmask his killer. Aided only by her worshipful friend Hely, Harriet crosses her town's rigid lines of race and caste and burrows deep into her family's history of loss.
Brand new book, never even read it!
