The Little Friend

By: Donna Tartt

Narrated by: Karen White

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)

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.

The bleakest book I have ever read.

I feel like this is a book everyone should read, because of the way it portrays uneducated society and what that does to people, what it’s like to be trapped in that setting that’s honestly like quicksand. Honestly, in the end of the book, a character gets trapped in a water tower for two whole days, desperately keeping his head above the dirty water, and really, that could be taken as a metaphor for what life is like in that environment.

But I feel like the majority of people wouldn’t be able to see anything but the racism, that the white characters are all terrible people and that the author is terrible for showing them in any sort of sympathetic light.

But that’s part of the point — the racism is horrible, the narrative understands that it’s horrible, so why do these otherwise decent people do it? Why can’t they see that it’s wrong? And why do they beat their kids, etc.?

The main character, 12, thinks at one point in the novel that every adult she knows seems like they had the life and energy sucked out of them at some point. That they all just accept that life is terrible and everyone’s out to get you, so you just have to toughen up and accept it. Some put a religious spin on it, “it’s in god’s plan” etc.

This is the point — people do those terrible things, those things that we can see are wrong, because those things are normal to them. Kids, like the protagonist, will point out the obvious injustice and inconsistency, the same way she points out and asks how scientists know what dinosaurs looked like. And adults will beat the kids and silence them and tell them it’s not their place to ask such things. And the kids will eventually break and stop asking and accept, and that’s what it means to be an adult in a society.

I want people to read this book, but I don’t want them to look at those people and feel superior for not sharing all of their faults. I want you to look at the things that you do that are normal in your life, in your micro-society, your town, your office, your neighborhood, your friend group, and ask “but why?”. That’s what people should take away from this.

just the best

first of all the narrator is awesome and second of all this is one of the most entertaining books I've ever read! I love the setting I love the plot and most of all I love the characters. The narrator does a great job in bringing everyone to life and me being from the south myself so many of these names and sayings ring a bail of remembrance

Been There, Experienced That

Having grown up in Georgia during the 1950’s and 60’s, I have experienced most of the people depicted in the book, except for the meth folks. The author really knows Southern families and white trash.