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)

Couldn't put it down

What made the experience of listening to The Little Friend the most enjoyable?

The richly drawn cast of characters is I think the main strength of this book. If you've ever spent time in the South, especially during the time frame she's set this story in, you will agree I think that she really nails it about how people interact, what small towns were like there, etc. The book revolves around an event that takes place (in memory) within the first chapter or so. The rest of the book is loosely organized around the mysterious circumstances that surround that event, a death. Eleven (?) year old Harriet, the central character, is worth the read all by herself. Donna Tarrt could not have done a better job in bringing her to life and making you care deeply about her. I laughed a lot as her thought processes unfolded, as she engaged in her amateur sleuth work, and as she enlisted the help of her adoring young friend with her plans. One reviewer mentioned Nancy Drew. Hardly. This is an adult book, with adult themes. I would challenge those who said it was too long to detail what parts of the plot/story they would have edited out. My book group could not come up with anything they'd have taken out, even though the length of the book is a bit daunting. It is a gripping story and you care deeply about many of the characters. The ending for many, including several in my book group, felt very unsatisfying, I will grant you that. But as we talked about it, we decided that this book was less mystery than it is a study of a time and a place and the ways in which people come to wrong conclusions based on their prejudices, misconceptions, and miscommunications. Those wrong conclusions change whole lives and can be tragic. Many things DO NOT get

Beautiful writing, but story loses its way

Any additional comments?

If I had been reading this novel, I might have put it down, since the story wanders and drifts. But listening to Karen White reading made it a much smoother ride. Tartt paints a lovely world, and she captures the spirit of childhood. No, check that. She nails it 100%. The characters bleed off the page, as does the setting. But don't expect a page turner, based on the opening paragraph.

Great Story, DIFFICULT Narrator

Donna Tartt is such a good writer. This book is wonderful, but, David Pitu or some alternative narrator for this unabridged version, would be so helpful.

Interesting

Enjoyed the different characters and the perspective of a 9year old
Girl in 1940$ south

Loved It!

I heart Donna Tartt, but I really loved David Pittu's reading of the Goldfinch, and I think it would be fantastic if Audible re-released both "Little Friend + Secret Hist." w/him as the narrator.

Overall; I really have no words for the quality of Donna Tartt books ... she's simply amazing!

Great Southern Story

This is an older book and hasn't been reviewed for a while and I think it deserves an update. I almost didn't give it a shot due to the negative reviews about the narrator, but I'm so glad that I did. She is a bit emphatic in her reading, but it calms down once she gets into the story and frankly, I think she does a great job with the various voices, including genteel Southern from northern Mississippi. Being from West Tennessee, which is more like Mississippi than the rest of Tennessee, these are voices and characters that I grew up with and know well. The cast is substantial, well-developed, quirky as appropriate, and the black dialect is spot-on for the time. The story is fresh, unique, and has the undeniable ring of reality and honesty which gives it the best kind of interest for a reader - kinship.

Good story, bad reading

Sadly, the long and somewhat complicated story is boycotted by the overly pronounced performance by Karen White. At first I actually thought I couldn't go on with the book because of the unnatural and mannered way of accentuating the words and phrases. It irritated me so much that in future I will carefully avoid books read by her.

More great characters and story from Donna Tartt

I downloaded this one following my read of THE GOLDFINCH, which I found to be beautiful and compelling.

Tartt has a great gift for characters, and the people she created for this book really did seem to come to life.

I very much enjoyed this book and am about to download her third one next.

Terrible ending!

I kept hoping this would all come out in the end and was very unhappy with the sudden and horrible ending.
The Gold Finch was good and wrapped up every detail. Not so this one!

Little Friend, Big Book!

What did you love best about The Little Friend?

Donna Tartt's visuals are really good.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

I enjoy the ending, but felt it need more closer.

What about Karen White’s performance did you like?

Karnen White did a really good job. No complains on my end.

If you could take any character from The Little Friend out to dinner, who would it be and why?

I wouldn't want to take any of them out to dinner.

Any additional comments?

This was a great book buried in with a lot of filler. There’s no way this book should have been over 600 pages. The book has some really good parts, but for the most part it is just boring filler that has nothing to do with the story at all. The adults in the book have conversations that are so pointless, boarding, and at times very racist. It is obnoxious how stupid little things like people eating or watching television are described in great detail. It goes on and on talking about the plots of popular 70s soap operas and cartoons that it is distracting from the plot of the story of the book itself. The thing I found the most annoying about ‘The Little Friend' is the book’s endless references to children’s literature. During the exciting parts of the story, it spins off and starts comparing what is going on to some part of The Jungle Book, James Bond, Winnie the Pooh, Schlock Homes, Scooby-Doo, Lawrence of Arabia… and so on and so forth. The parts where the boy develops an obsession with horror themed comic books is amusing, but apart from that, if they edited out all the parts describing what people were reading and all the comparisons to this what was happening to classic books and pop culture, then this would’ve been a far more enjoyable book. I’m interested in checking out Donna Tartt’s abridged recording.