The Little Friend - Softcover

Tartt, Donna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747564132 ISBN 13: 9780747564133

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2003

Synopsis

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, was found hanging by the neck from a rope slung over a black-tupelo tree in his own garden. Twelve 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, 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 is not 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 with rich human drama to create a powerful alchemy. Here 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.

About this title

Review

Ten years in the writing, it can hardly be said that The Little Friend, Donna Tartt's second novel and the follow-up to her phenomenally successful and assured debut The Secret History, was rushed out. But was it worth the wait? Write about what you know is an old adage and much of the appeal of her first book was that its sense of place--an exclusive New England campus was clearly and so adroitly drawn from intimate experience. Here, the Mississippi-born Tartt utilises, piercingly on occasions, the American landscape of her own childhood.

The Cleves--Charlotte, Grandma Edith, Great Aunt Adelaide, Aunts Libby and Tat--are a southern family of noble stock but, by the early 1970s, diminished numbers and wealth; haunted by the motiveless, unsolved murder of 9-year-old Robin, "their dear little Robs", a decade earlier. (The novel opens, a la Bunny's corpse in The Secret History, with his body found hanging from a black-tupelo tree in the garden: "the toes of his limp tennis shoes dangled six inches above the grass.") Harriet, Charlotte's youngest child, "neither sweet nor pretty" like her sister, Allison, but "smart" was a baby when Robin died. Now a precocious, bookish pre-teen, she is convinced she can unravel the mystery of his death. Her chief suspects are the Ratliffs, a local clan of speed-dealing ne'er-do-wells, one of whom, Danny, had been in Robin's class. (The Ratliffs own sorry histories, and in particular the corrosive influence of matriarch Gum, are tidily juxtaposed throughout the book with the varying fortunes of the Cleves.) Harriet enlists Hely, her willing schoolyard disciple, to help investigate.

For a while the novel takes on a positively Nancy Drew-esque hue; Harriet and Hely the spies, sneaking into buildings, making off with poisonous snakes and escaping from drug-addled trailer trash on bicycles. In a significant departure from The Secret History though, Tartt does not seem unduly concerned about plot and, or, pacing. She's interested in characterisation and the bickering aunts and so many of the minor characters, the odious car dealer Mr Dial, for example, "all rectitude and pickiness, sweet moral outrage itself", are realised wonderfully. This isn't to say it's not well plotted; it is, as the dénouement eventually reveals, but it is rather languid and things can get a bit soggy midway. (Overuse of the adjective "stolidly", a word that unavoidably, if quite erroneously, calls to mind heavy fruitcake, doesn't really help either.) Tartt's Southern Gothic saga may lack the page-turning thrill of her last novel but it's, ultimately, a no less impressive or rewarding work of fiction. --Travis Elborough

Review

"..a mesmerising tale" -- Good House Keeping, November 2003

"an intelligent, elegant novel that, unlike her debut, manages to be clever without being arch or self-conscious" -- The Scotsman, 18th October 2003

"an unputdownable, astonishing feat of writing which soars above all of the hype. This is a novel of sheer brilliance." -- The Leeds Guide, October/November 2003

"exquisitely crafted" -- The Sunday Tribune, 12th October 2003

"her writing is simply magical." -- Boyd tonkin, Independet magazine

'A dazzling tour de force' -- Daily Mail

'Beautifully written and immaculately crafted ... even though there's humour, the tension is palpable. Unputdownable' -- Daily Mirror

'Harriet is one of the most engaging and rounded characters you are likely to find ... gorgeous, fluent, visual' -- The Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0747564132
• ISBN 13: 9780747564133
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576