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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! 


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