Vintage, 624 pp.
Published October 22, 2002
Bestselling author Donna Tartt returns with a grandly ambitious and utterly riveting novel of childhood, innocence and evil.
The setting is Alexandria, Mississippi, 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 Louis 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.
Several years ago I read and enjoyed The Secret History. Not long after finishing it I got Donna Tartt's second novel, The Little Friend, and allowed it to languish unread ever since. Thankfully Evelina of AvalinahsBooks invited me to do a buddy read and this was one of the books our TBRs had in common! I say thankfully not only because Evelina was one of the first to welcome me into the book blogging community and I consider her one of my dearest friends in the community, but also because...this was kind of a difficult book to finish. While it provided a lot of good discussion topics for our Twitter messages, the narrative ambled around with little momentum for much of the 600+ pages. Tartt is a strong writer with genuine talent for wordcraft and characters, but the plot here left something to be desired. Even so, there's still plenty to discuss about The Little Friend and you can read my answers to Evelina's questions down below! Once you're done, don't forget to read Evelina's answers to my questions right here too!