I pride myself on my ability to change, to adapt, and to admit when I'm wrong. Though I am not changing the star rating (the book still bored me to tears) I will fully admit that I somehow missed who the titular little friend actually was. I'm not covering up my mistake by editing the review. I am simply adding this note at the beginning. The cover is still, in my most honest opinion, complete garbage.Donna Tartt's sophomore effort has probably the worst cover and title out of all the books I've ever read. I read the entire novel (of course, or else we wouldn't be here) and I have no idea why the book is entitled THE LITTLE FRIEND. As to the doll on the cover... there are four paragraphs about 400 pages in that speak about a doll the main character's grandmother tries to remember for no other reason than not recalling the name is annoying her. She's just been in a terrible accident, but she won't be able to rest until she figures out what the name of this doll was... That's it. As to the title... Our main character, Harriet, has a friend, but he's not the focus of the book. The entire book is about Harriet attempting to solve the murder of her brother, Robin, who died when she was three... so, once again, he's not the little friend. Who the fuck is the titular little friend? Inquiring minds want to know. If there's some subtext I missed, it should have been clearer. Seriously, everything else in this book is harped on with excessive verbosity, why not the reasoning behind the title? Tartt's first book is about a group of friends dealing with a sordid past, so THE SECRET HISTORY makes sense as a title. THE GOLDFINCH is about a young man who steals a painting of a goldfinch after a bombing, so there's no mystery there. Why am I left wondering, after 555 goddamn pages, whom this motherfucking little friend is? Balls to you, Donna Tartt, you pretentious Pulitzer Prize winning billybumbler! *wants to believe this is jealousy talking, but sees that most reviewers on Amazon and Goodreads agree with him, so he returns to the review* I have a better title for this slumberfest: HOW NOT TO WRITE ENGAGING, ENTERTAINING FICTION. Repeatedly slamming my cock and bean bag in a desk drawer while simultaneously shoving flaming toothpicks up my nose would be more entertaining than this book. I was bored stupid. With its sleep-inducing walls of text and adverb-laden meanderings, this book is better than NyQuil. Tartt has a horrible habit of starting a sentence with an adverb then going on to describe why she used the adverb. "Nervously, she fidgeted with her skirt." Given the context of the paragraph, we know the little girl is nervous, so the adverb becomes useless, nothing but word filler to increase word count. Donna Tart says it takes her seven years to write a book because writing any quicker is not fun for her. I say she's a liar. I believe it takes her seven years because she's waiting around for Merriam Webster to invent new adverbs for her to overuse. Now, you would think that with her excessive adverb usage, Ms. Tartt would be able to describe the sun as something other than "high and hot", but no, oh no, she can't. Five times in this novel (count 'em, pumpkin, 1... 2... 3... 4... MOTHER-GODDAMN-FUCKING 5!) she uses that same descriptor. Not to mention, it rains every night. *gouges eyeballs out with rusty spoon and proceeds to skullfuck himself* As an author, I'd give this book three stars, because it is a well-written dissertation on what not to do. As a reader, I'd give it a one, because I've read Klu Klux Klan brochures that were less offensive. So I ended up at two stars, because I can math good. Why's it offensive? Let's see here... The N-word is used ad nasuem by not only the antagonists, but the protags as well. In narrative, in dialogue, in inner thought, all over the place. There is no sense of time frame here, so we do not have a social climate by which to judge the necessity for the overuse of such an ugly word. People speak on cell phones, so its relatively modern. Eight tracks are mentioned, so it could be the eighties. Debutantes have black house servants whom they pay twenty dollars (a week? biweekly? a month? don't know because it's never expanded on or explained) for their services, so it might be the fifties... Whatever year it is, the message is clear. "Niggers" live in "Niggertowns" and do "Nigger duties". Each one of those phrases were used in this book more than once, and as many as a dozen times each. Every black stereotype was used, from the slick pimp-ish drug dealer (whose name, I shit you not, is Catfish) to the Mammy-esque nanny whom our main character loves as if the woman is a pet. In fact, when the "nanny" (and I use "nanny" lightly) quits/gets fired, Harriet only misses her because the house becomes filthy and borderline unlivable. *calls the NAACP and requests that they stage their first book burning* I could go on and on about how utterly atrocious this novel is. I could drone on forever about how Tartt ruins every tense moment with unneeded flashbacks. I could bash you over the head with how ridiculous and anticlimactic the ending is, but I won't. Instead, I'll beg you to never read this book. Unless of course you're a member of the Aryan Brotherhood who's having trouble sleeping. Seriously, really, honestly, truthfully, nervously, I adamantly plead with you persuasively, truly, run screamingly from this horribly written book. And one more "ly", because fuck you, that's why. *passes out from exhaustion*
Oh, Harriet, you poor dear. Twelve and a half, homely and unpopular. The girl with the antique-sounding name and possessor of an "old soul." She has a gruff, common sense approach to life that eschews flattery and wins her few fans among her peers and relatives.In vain, the aunts tried to teach her to be polite. "But don't you understand, darling," said Tat, "that if you don't like the fruitcake, it's better to eat it anyway instead of hurting your hostess's feelings?""But I don't like fruitcake.""I know you don't Harriet. That's why I used that example.""But fruitcake is horrible. I don't know anybody that likes it. And if I tell her I like it, she's just going to keep on giving it to me."You certainly can't argue with that logic.Harriet was just a babe, plopped down in a wind-up swing, when her 9-year-old brother was murdered in the family's yard during a Mother's Day celebration.Now, her older sister mostly sleeps and cries. Her mother is mostly sedated. She is raising herself with the help of a stern grandmother, a gaggle of great-aunts and the housekeeper. Having nothing in common with girls her age, she hangs out with a passel of boys; enough boys so that they can play the apostles to her Jesus in a reenactment of the Last Supper. (This was one of my favorite parts of the book!)Her biggest goals for the summer? Avoid going to church camp and win the library summer reading contest. (Who could not LOVE this girl?) Oh, and she's decided to solve the murder of her brother, committed so many years ago. This bit of Nancy Drewism will land her smack dab in a nest of vipers (literally), and deep into the dangerous world of a family of meth-dealing ne-er-do-wells. This seems to be a love it/hate it title. I can see why it's not for everyone. The pacing is slow and languid, much like the Mississippi summer setting of the book. Things take their own sweet time unfolding. Many of the characters are not likable. And, yeah, there are unanswered questions. I kept reading because I was in love with Harriet. As one character describes her, ...Harriet was not sweet or whimsical by any stretch of the imagination. Harriet was a trip.And that she was...With distaste, Harriet reflected upon how life had beaten down the adults she knew, every single grown up. Something strangled them as they grew older, made them doubt their own powers - laziness? Habit? Their grip slackened; they stopped fighting and resigned themselves to what happened. "That's Life." That's what they all said. "That's Life, Harriet, that's just how it is, you'll see." Well, Harriet would not see. She was young still, and the chains had not grown tight around her ankles. Whatever was to be done she would do it. She would strike now--while she still could, before her nerve broke and her spirit failed her--with nothing to sustain her but her own gigantic solitude.She is gonna grow up to be one heckuva woman!
What do You think about The Little Friend (2003)?
Well, that was a huge disappointment. I had heard this was generally the least loved of Donna Tartt's novels, but I went into it expecting to like it a bit more than most because I adore her work. But no, sadly this was a big letdown. Overall this book just left me very confused. How did she go from such an atmospheric, well-written novel as The Secret History to this? And then to come up with the masterpiece, The Goldfinch? I just don't get how she is the same author of this book.The writing isn't bad, it's just not nearly to the caliber of her other novels. And you know those people, maybe friends or co-workers, who tell these long-winded stories and when they finish speaking, you're left going, "...that's it?" That basically sums up my feelings about this book. The whole time I was waiting for the story to arrive at some point where I could go, "OH!! Yeah! Wow!" and it would be redeemed. Sadly, it did not.A 1 star seems a bit harsh, because I suppose within the 555 pages there were some moments that kept me reading and interested. Though by the end I was SO over it, I just wanted to be done and know what happens. But even that didn't satisfy my enough to make it better. I'm really bummed because now I've read all 3 of her novels that are published, and I probably have to wait like 9 more years for another one. And this one didn't live up to the excellence of her other books. Ah well, at least I have The Goldfinch to appreciate.
—Maxwell
DNFThis book was so slow, and so boring that at times I struggled to stay awake.It's overly descriptive, with long-winded sentences. One marathon effort was 12 lines long. I had to read it 3 times to make any sense of it.I didn’t really get a feel for any of the characters, except Harriet. I had trouble telling her aunties apart, except for Edie. And her mother and her sister were bland and uninteresting.Harriet, searching for goals for her life, decides to train herself, like Houdini, to hold her breath for 3 minutes. On her second attempt she has a hallucination that lasted for 6 pages! 6 pages!! That’s when I gave up. Hallucinations have now been added to my pet hates, along with dreams.I finished at page 193 out of 1268 on my laptop and I struggled to get even that far.
—Ruth Turner
This is one of Tartt's earlier books published before her acclaimed The Goldfinch. The same complexity and richness of character, the same explosion of detail that makes The Goldfinch so memorable can be found in a slightly less orderly way. Less orderly in the sense that this book didn't quite have the tight narrative structure where there is little that is told that is not important to the story. This book could have lost fifty or so pages without it affecting the plot line. But who cares, really, when those extra fifty pages are fascinating in their own right. This is a story of twelve-year-old Harriet. Like most of Donna Tartt's main characters, Harriet is, well, unusual. Unusual in the kind of way we all are, if someone got to know us as deeply as the author let's us know Harriet. Harriet's life is unusual too. She is motivated by the murder of her older brother when she was just a baby and her goal in life is to find the person who killed him and avenge his death. This simple plot line takes place in a small town in Mississippi and the characters that inhabit this world are both recognizable and like no-one you've ever met before. Now and then, if you like to write, you run into books that are worth reading at least a couple of times. The first time just for the pleasure of it and the second time, more carefully, to observe how the author pulled it off. This is one of those books. Especially if you, like me, are a fan of the omniscient narrator. You know the kind that jumps into the minds of twenty or so characters without missing a beat. When you read this kind of book you get the sense of someone conducting a one-hundred piece orchestra, of a hundred instruments losing themselves to produce one musical experience. The other thing you learn from a book like this, if you like to write, is that writing is all about the concrete, the particular, the hard atoms of life and spirit that make our world and our lives. Here's writing behind which you can detect expertise on muscle-cars, amphetamines, Houdini, revolvers, snake handling preachers (and snakes), summer camps, the Bible, the Civil War, to mention just a few. You have to be grateful for people like Tartt who give years of their lives to first acquire and then transform this expertise into an an art that enriches you and me.
—Francisco
