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)

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 Little Friend

I loved this book. I did not want it to end. I felt very immersed in the characters and their environs, almost as if I literally dwelled among them. More from Donna Tartt I hope!!

Loved it enough to read it twice!

If you could sum up The Little Friend in three words, what would they be?

A fascinating and profoundly sad picture of how tragedy brings about a family's demise; divides, poisons and rots it right down to the heartwood.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Little Friend?

Harriet losing Ida, the only steady, dependable, loving presence in her world. She was never allowed to grieve for what must have been a devastating loss.

What does Karen White bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

She brought life to the characters, representing them each with nuance. I disagree with those who say the narrator botched the Southern accent and colloquialisms. I'm from the South (although not from Georgia) and found White's narration to be adequately southern.

Who was the most memorable character of The Little Friend and why?

Harriet. Hands down. She was absolutely flesh-and-blood-real to me; so quirky and original. I was her age and growing up in a small town in the South at the time the story is set. What a great sidekick she would have made!

Any additional comments?

I read this book several years ago and it never left me. Decided to revisit it and wasn't disappointed!

Boring

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

No. It is too mired in detail and full of its own importance. Its just not a good story, and the narrator's southern accent is grating.

Would you recommend The Little Friend to your friends? Why or why not?

I would recommend that read or listen to Donna Tarrt's other books, The Goldfinch or The Secret History.

What three words best describe Karen White’s voice?

grating

Was The Little Friend worth the listening time?

No. I stopped listening after about 4 hours. It wasn't captivating me.

Any additional comments?

Too many loose threads and unanswered questions in this overly long book.

Cutting the fat...

I like Donna Tartt. I liked the Secret History a lot, I loved The Goldfinch. I don’t mind the long descriptions, the deep explorations of her characters. I like that her characters are rarely all good or bad, and that she makes you feel compassion even for the baddies. But I had trouble with The Little Friend because the scenes are stretchto uncomfortable length. They can feel belabored, overdone, even down right boring. What made things worse in this audiobook was the narrator. The was okay in dialogs, but the narrative parts were totally out of tune. She starts with an accents that drops sometime in the course of the book, and reads the whole thing as if to a class of preschoolers. I am
Not saying that one should not read this book, but one should make one’s opinion of Donna Tartt as a writer based on it. The Goldfinch is a much better option.

Excessively Long

I've read her other two novels and loved them! This wasn't a terrible story by any means--just long and dense but without necessity (in my opinion). I really struggled to get through it and the ending was anticlimactic for me.

Ending sucks

Ending gives no answers
Good book though. Enjoyed listening until the end. Didn’t get to find out who the murderer was.

Minutiae

The writing is so good but the story could have been told with about a third less pages. The amount of details that get explained and have nothing to do with the story is a lot but overall the story is really good, the characters are engaging and the writing is top notch. The narrator was a bit hard to get used to but after awhile you forget about it and by the end you understand she’s actually quite good. If you’re a fan of contemporary fiction, don’t pass on this even though you may get a bit bored here and there, it’s worth the time.

But I invested 22 hours!

After Donna Tart skillfully pulled me into this fascinating and well-constructed drama, got me to understand and feel for the vivid characters (Go, Harriet!), and wove an intriguingly tangled yet believable web between them, she just CUT OFF the story! I thought there must have been a Part 4 I'd forgotten to download. While some stories end this way on purpose (real life often has loose ends, right?) they usually let you know in some way that it's been done on purpose, that you're supposed to ponder something because of it, etc. This one just ended with NOTHING. All the loose ends were still loose, and more was unresolved than at the beginning. Which would have been ok, really, if Ms. Tart had just communicated in some way that this was the point of the whole thing. The way she left it, however, was very disappointing. Especially since I didn't want to put it down! I feel so cheated.