The Little Friend: Donna Tartt

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flowers with emotional insight, a gift for comedy and a sure sense of pacing. Wisely, this novel eschews a feel-good resolution. What it does provide is an immensely satisfying reading experience. (Nov. 1)

There is an incident with a snake (actually, there are several -- ophidian fans will be thrilled) and Harriet the hunter also becomes the hunted.

The death has a devastating impact on the family, and their dead brother still casts a shadow over the two girls years later: Harriet is the central character in the book, an intense, bookish girl who made the kids who were devoted to her play Joan of Arc and Crusades and the Last Supper (where she assumed the role of Jesus). Harriet learns some lessons over the course of the novel, but Tartt does not allow her to grow up: The Little Friend is most definitely not a coming-of-age novel. Danny is just coming into his own here, now an almost full-grown man, taking a more active role in the family businesses. I can tell you that The Little Friend (...) is overlong, its writing occasionally precious and its resolution murky; and I can also praise the book's vital characters, its supple conjuring of mood and place, and its dry, dark humor. But I can't explain how it is that this is a novel you sink into, or how Tartt casts her weird spell." - Laura Miller, Salon

Harriet [is] one of the most engaging and rounded characters you are likely to find…Tartt's writing: gorgeous, fluent, visual." - The Times (London) I’m Lucy, an award-winning book blogger, bibliotherapist and writer with a passion for brilliant books, independent bookstores, literary travel and book festivals around the world. The Literary Edit is your guide to the beautiful world of books. The father of the Ratliff brothers is described as being almost psychotically abusive towards his sons. Twelve years later Robin's two younger sisters, Allison and Harriet, are now sixteen and twelve years old, respectively. Harriet, the younger child, is considered particularly difficult as she is intensely smart but uncompromising. Harriet has developed a morbid fascination with her brother and with the past of her matrilineal family, the Cleves. Her great-grandfather, Judge Cleve, once owned the local mansion, "Tribulation", but lost the family's wealth in his declining years.The fact that The Little Friend turns out to be quite different from the thriller that the reader -- and, I suspect, the author -- may have anticipated is a serious flaw. And yet as a novel of Southern manners it succeeds remarkably well. (…) In the grand Southern tradition, the writing is fluent, even lulling. It's also psychologically acute. (…) The Little Friend doesn't get where it was headed, either, but there's no question that it takes you somewhere worth going." - Daniel Mendelsohn, The New Yorker Bad Guys Play Pool: The local pool hall is supposedly the center of all low-life activity in Alexandria.