I picked up the book at a literature festival long back in the late 2000s. From the book cover till the last page, The Little Friend by Donna Tartt is every bit engaging and suspenseful. Set in a small southern town of Mississippi in the early 1970s, the novel follows the story of a 12-year-old girl, Harriet, who is curious and restless about the death of her brother, Robin who was found hanging from a tree twelve years back. The book’s lead might be 12 but the dark and often scary novel is for an adult’s reading room.
The book starts with a fast-paced narrative, but unpredictably turns slow. However, that doesn’t mean dull. Each of the 555 pages of the book can be picked up anytime for a random read and would still take you back to the dark, dreary place the novel is set in. Each character is quite well developed and the poetic narrative makes it easy to visualize and form a graphic image of the story as it continues to take turns. The author has managed to give a detailed account of the lives and pace of the southern families through the family life of Harriett, the Dufresnes and her aunts, the Cleves and even, the Ratliffs who run a drug business in the hiding and Harriet believes had something to do with her brother’s murder.
Without giving out too much about the characters and their personalities, I recommend the book to anyone who likes unsolved mystery and adventure drama. For some, the later part can be a bit of a stretch but it does get out of the way and the novel catches pace once again. All in all, a gripping read. Just go for it.
Book Excerpt
And – since this willful amnesia had kept Robin’s death from being translated into that sweet old family vernacular which smoothed even the bitterest mysteries into comfortable, comprehensible form – the memory of that day’s events had a chaotic, fragmented quality, bright mirror shards of nightmare which flared at the smell of wisteria, that creaking of a clothes-line, a certain stormy cast of spring life.
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