Skip to main content

The Little Friend by Donna Tartt #Inbetweeny

You know when you read a book, and then you have to read other people's reviews to see what they made of it as you are left so undecided? This is how I was about Donna Tartt's The Little Friend.

Book club had read The Goldfinch way back in 2014 and it feels as though The Little Friend has been waiting on my shelf since then to be read. The cover really unsettles me and perhaps for that reason I waited until now when I have tried to have a clear out of books that have been waiting too long to read. The book is the follow up to the hugely successful The Secret History, spoken with reverence in literary circles. So much so that many didn't like The Little Friend on first read due to it not matching up. I haven't read The Secret History so can't comment. But I have read The Little Friend (and various other reviews) so comment I will.

It opened with a spectacular prologue - the murder(?) of a 9 year old boy in 1960's Mississippi before skipping to the view point of the victims youngest sister some 12 years later where we see the devastating effects the still unsolved murder has had on the family. Harriett (the sister) decides to solve the murder with her besotted best friend Hely. It does sound slightly Nancy Drew however this is Tartt we are talking about and childhood detective fiction this is not.   

Harriett wasn't really a nice character and I questioned whether I even liked her. The cold-hearted way she contemplated murder confused me. However for all she was surrounded by Aunts, she was so often left to her own devices and at times I felt a genuine sadness for her (copying out the recipe book for homework so as not to reveal how little home-cooked food she ate). I particularly liked the Bible Camp section where Harriett describes all the hormonal teenagers. Is it a coming of age novel then? No not really.  

Tartt had the setting spot on, mid-summer, the heat, the brooding, the snakes, the class system. With the exception of Hely the men were all vile (Harriet's father, the Ratcliffs, the camp leader and even smarmy Roy Dial). There was inevitable references to race and white trash so in some respects it could be classed as a great all American Novel. But that still left the murder of a 9 year old boy. 

Attempts to cover this off were expertly written, The Mission chapter being frightening and intense, The Tower similarly (although at times I was confused as to whose foot was resting where and when) yet without giving the ending away it's lack of satisfactory resolution made it fail in the crime thriller genre too.

Herein lies the problem, the book just couldn't decide what it was. There is no denying it is very well written, at times staggeringly so but it just didn't quite click with me. The ending left a lot of questions unanswered, it was slightly unbelievable in parts and I highly question Harriett who was willing to shoot a man in cold blood at the age of 12. I preferred The Goldfinch. 

The link above for The Little Friend takes you to Barter Books in Alnwick. A brilliant second hand book shop in an old train station claiming to hold the origins to the Keep Calm and Carry on Slogan and serving cinnamon toast with its natural alley cinnamon tea. Fabulous. 

If you liked this one try Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussman a book I recommend you read not once but twice! 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lock down book club - books from a different country

So we continued with the Zoom version of book club this month and it was lovely to see so many of us tackle it. The theme was books set in a different country (if you can't travel, let a book take you).  I read The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet, a detective story with an element of tricksy fiction set in France. I really enjoyed it and you can read my full review here. We travelled to America a couple of times most interestingly to see whether Hilary Clinton (or Bill for that fact) would have made President if they had not got married. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld is out in hardback now. Norway was a popular spot - Norwegian Nights by Derek B Miller about a retired american marine who moves to Norway and intervenes to save a young boys life sounded interesting. So much so that at least one member of the group has gone on to buy the first in the series, American By Day. We even made it as far as Japan and Botswana (and discovered a Scottish connection for Alexander McCa
Post a Comment
Read more

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi

I expected to be emotionally drained after reading this one and to be honest (in a weird kind of way) I didn’t mind the thought that I would be. This was backed up by the introduction describing a brilliant young man whose writing was breath taking and whose story was devastating. Emotional rollercoaster of epic proportions was surely in store. I didn’t mind the beginning of the book although I was slightly surprised when we delved so deeply into Kalanthi's past in what was only a slim book. I was willing to gloss over the large number of references to his search as a youth to finding the meaning of life and what makes us, us as after all this was written by someone forced to ponder that very question. I also found the medical training he did vaguely interesting, I appreciated the reverence he placed in relation to the cadaver he was required to cut open as part of his medical training. However when it became apparent the actual portion of the book to do with him receiving hi
2 comments
Read more

Mount by Jilly Cooper #inbetweeny

I'll start this blog with a warning, this post does contain spoilers. So if you haven't read the book then please don't read this blog, yet. Of course you should read this post just wait a little while until you've read the latest installment of Rupert Campbell Black (RCB). Warnings out of the way I'll begin. I was massively looking forward to reading this book having hugely enjoyed the previous ones. RCB is my (not so) secret trashy pleasure and has been for many years. This book had all the ingredients of a classic, pages of wonderfully named characters, a few tortured souls and of course RCB with all his horses, dogs and now grandchildren. The book got off to a good start full of characters from old but also plenty of new ones to mix it up a bit. The horse's really played a starring role in this book but I also really loved Gav and at first Gala. Yep only at first as she went strongly down hill and I bet you can guess why. RCB. Here is where I fell o
Post a Comment
Read more