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

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

After The Party by Cressida Connolly

After The Party was May's book of the month. “Had it not been for my weakness, someone who is now dead could still be alive. That is what I believed and consequently lived with every day in prison.’ It is the summer of 1938 and Phyllis Forrester has returned to England after years abroad. Moving into her sister’s grand country house, she soon finds herself entangled in a new world of idealistic beliefs and seemingly innocent friendships. Fevered talk of another war infiltrates their small, privileged circle, giving way to a thrilling solution: a great and charismatic leader, who will restore England to its former glory. At a party hosted by her new friends, Phyllis lets down her guard for a single moment, with devastating consequences. Years later, Phyllis, alone and embittered, recounts the dramatic events which led to her imprisonment and changed the course of her life forever.” We were very confused initially as to which party the book was referring to. We all thought it...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wedlock by Wendy Moore

Is a book good if you all liked it but can't find much to say about it? That was the case with Wedlock . A true story about Mary Eleanor Bowes ' marriage to Captain Stoney , the violence she suffered at his hand and her subsequent struggle to obtain a divorce in the 1700's. We started off fine, enthusing about how much we all liked it until suddenly we were talking about X Factor. Ahem. This is a serious book club don't you know Ok so lets have a serious conversation about all the local history the book contained. Oh yes we loved the fact that it was all about Newcastle. Didn't it make you want to visit Gibside Hall that is so close to us but that we've never been to. And Bowes Museum, we should have a field trip. Now Peshwari Naan Bread is far superior to Garlic...how did that creep in?! A Chicken Chaat discussion later and we managed to discuss how easy the book was to read. Despite it being a period book there was no archaic language making it very acce...
1 comment
Read more