The Little Friend

By: Donna Tartt

Narrated by: Karen White

Length: 25 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch comes an utterly riveting novel set in Mississippi of childhood, innocence, and evil. • “Destined to become a special kind of classic.” —The New York Times Book Review

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. Filled with hairpin turns of plot and “a bustling, ridiculous humanity worthy of Dickens” (The New York Times Book Review), The Little Friend is a work of myriad enchantments by a writer of prodigious talent.

©2002 Donna Tartt (P)2002 Books On Tape, Inc.

Critic reviews

2003, Orange Prize for Fiction, Nominated

"This extraordinary book [has] a main character, a twelve-year-old girl named Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, who ranks up there with Huck Finn, Miss Havisham, Quentin Compson, and Philip Marlowe, fictional characters who don't seem in the least fictional.... To Kill a Mockingbird If is the childhood that everyone wanted and no one really had, The Little Friend is childhood as it is, by turns enchanting and terrifying." (Malcolm Jones, Newsweek)

"Breathtaking... A sublime tale rich in religious overtones, moral ambiguities, and violent, poetic acts... From its darkly enticing opening, we are held spellbound." (Lisa Shea, Elle)

"Languidly atmospheric...psychologically acute...A rich novel that takes you somewhere worth going." (The New Yorker)

"It is an exceptionally suspenseful, flawlessly written story." (Booklist)

Whodunit?

I really enjoyed listening to this book but felt that it needed another few chapters. Left me hanging for closure

Alas!

This book was a painful indulgence by the author to show off her talents as a character builder and flowery scene setter, forgetting completely to tell the story. It seemed that telling the story was the annoying part for her as she only cared about overwhelmingly descriptive passages. Enough already!1 .

Disappointing

What a waste of time....couldn't wait until it ended and very disappointed. Labored the entire story. Just say no

Great characters

Every book of hers has been a worthy listen. Didn't care for the ending of this one but sometimes it's good to let your imagination decide how things end up.

excellent. suspenseful. going to purchase her 3rd!

about to purchase the third book by this author. fabulous read! can't wait to see what story she tells next!!

Amazing

This is a fantastic tale. The characters are interesting. The action is gripping.

It's likely I've never read anything quite like this including her other books.

Had the potential to be a good book

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Based on the book description alone, yes, but after reading the book. No. It listed a mystery thriller, but this book is really neither. It just follows a little girl who lost a sibling.

What was most disappointing about Donna Tartt’s story?

Small SPOILER: Without ever reavealing what truly happened to her brother leaves this book just hanging. Listening to the life of this little girl growing up was interesting with her family an all, but seemed to me nothing was tied up.

a long winded good story.

the story was good, however way more detail than needed. Every little thing is described in excruciating detail.

One of the Best and Worst Books Ever

Would you consider the audio edition of The Little Friend to be better than the print version?

I haven't read the print version, so I wouldn't know. But I'm glad I listened to the audio edition. The narrator does a fantastic job.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I would have included a somewhat conclusive ending

Have you listened to any of Karen White’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, I haven't.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The confrontation between the main character Harriett and the antagonist Donny in the water tower was gripping and suspenseful--even if a bit unbelievable.

Any additional comments?

I loved The Secret History and especially The Goldfinch. So I approached The Little Friend with anticipation and was not disappointed. It's a great story well written and well narrated. By the midpoint I was completely absorbed in the story and its characters. Then came the ending...a huge disappointment. If you're good at making up your own endings to stories, you'll enjoy this book. The ending leaves everything hanging in midair. It's almost like the author suddenly felt tired of writing the book and just quit. Every end is left loose.

The bleakest book I have ever read.

I feel like this is a book everyone should read, because of the way it portrays uneducated society and what that does to people, what it’s like to be trapped in that setting that’s honestly like quicksand. Honestly, in the end of the book, a character gets trapped in a water tower for two whole days, desperately keeping his head above the dirty water, and really, that could be taken as a metaphor for what life is like in that environment.

But I feel like the majority of people wouldn’t be able to see anything but the racism, that the white characters are all terrible people and that the author is terrible for showing them in any sort of sympathetic light.

But that’s part of the point — the racism is horrible, the narrative understands that it’s horrible, so why do these otherwise decent people do it? Why can’t they see that it’s wrong? And why do they beat their kids, etc.?

The main character, 12, thinks at one point in the novel that every adult she knows seems like they had the life and energy sucked out of them at some point. That they all just accept that life is terrible and everyone’s out to get you, so you just have to toughen up and accept it. Some put a religious spin on it, “it’s in god’s plan” etc.

This is the point — people do those terrible things, those things that we can see are wrong, because those things are normal to them. Kids, like the protagonist, will point out the obvious injustice and inconsistency, the same way she points out and asks how scientists know what dinosaurs looked like. And adults will beat the kids and silence them and tell them it’s not their place to ask such things. And the kids will eventually break and stop asking and accept, and that’s what it means to be an adult in a society.

I want people to read this book, but I don’t want them to look at those people and feel superior for not sharing all of their faults. I want you to look at the things that you do that are normal in your life, in your micro-society, your town, your office, your neighborhood, your friend group, and ask “but why?”. That’s what people should take away from this.