Rating: 
Summary: Still jonesing for my Donna Tartt fix
Review:
I concur with what the other 2-3 star-giving reviewers have written (ie. this book was beautifully written but an ultimate let down). I am suprised by two criticisms however. First, many complain of it's length and detail. The loving attention to flushing out her characters and setting mood and tone through description is what we expect from Ms Tartt. It may not be your cup of tea, but that's what you signed on for when you cracked this book. I, for one, would read 2000 pages of Ms Tartt's writing, but feel that I should have been given an ending with resolution (and I'm not talking about solving the murder).
The second comment I am surprised by is more minor but given the adamant reviews it has been mentioned in I'm baffled. Namely, some reviewers posit that there is no "little friend" or wonder what that term alludes to. Ms Tartt tells us expressly that Danny Ratliffe was Robin's "little friend". But, of course the term is also very nicely mirrored in the relationship of Hely to Harriet and Harriet to Ida (among many other friendships in the novel).
Rating: 
Summary: I'm putting it down now
Review: As an avid reader and having recently read "The Secret History", I eagerly looked forward to this novel. Ugh...I'm 300+ pages into and really have no investment in the characters or how they evolve. This exactly why I decided to skim other readers' reviews. Thank you! Perhaps one day in the distant future I will pick up the book again...but at this point it seems a laborious task and a waste of time...
Rating:
Summary: Little Friend, Big Images
Review: Donna Tartt is a writer's writer. Her image is amazing, her characters provocative. She's not afraid to go in to dark places, which is precisely why I enjoyed reading this book. Structurally she gets a way with murder and the important reviewers, New York Times, etc., seem not to notice.
Elizabeth Appell, Author of LESSONS FROM THE GYPSY CAMP
Rating: 
Summary: Greek tragedy--Mississippi style
Review: Donna Tartt, a classicist, structures this novel like a Greek tragedy. The death of Harriet's brother Robin is not the central event in the novel, but the starting point that sets the tragic events in motion. Harriet, believing that she can solve the mystery of Robin's death, with just a hunch to guide her and the worshipful boosterism of her equally ignorant chum, confronts a young man from the wrong side of the tracks in an escalating conflict that comes to a battle of life and death. Finally, Harriet, who is mostly abandoned by her family, has to face this threat totally alone--and she has to reckon with her own hubris in bringing about this crisis. She will be forever scarred by what she has done, but she is wiser for it all. Two families are on a collision course,and the novel is resolved when they meet in a horrifying climax. To say that the ending is not resolved is not to understand the point of the book. Empathy is generated by understanding the heartbreak of the wasted suffering on the part of both parties --neither one is totally innocent or guilty. The last chapter just illustrates the total ignorance of the rest of the community of what has happened, and how the main characters will have to bear their grief alone for the rest of their lives. The comedy of life in a small town rises to the level of tragedy--fate takes its course once the events are set in motion, leaving the reader with a profound catharsis.
Rating:
Summary: OK, but...
Review: Having loved The Secret History so much, I couldn't wait to read Donna Tartt's next novel, and she certainly made us wait a long time! Unfortunately, this book does not compare to her first, I'm disappointed to report. Her first book came alive and I couldn't put it down; this never really grabbed me and I struggled through it. If you're looking for a great book, pick up a copy of The Secret History instead!
Rating:
Summary: Yeah, but...
Review: I don't usually demand a fully resolved ending to a book. I don't need everything handed to me on a silver platter, literature-wise. This one, however, needed some resolution to justify how it was constructed.
I've heard this novel described as a coming-of-age slice of life, which would be fine, but "The Little Friend" isn't written like a slice of life. It's written like a Southern gothic murder mystery, with much loving, beautifully-written detail afforded to subplots that we're led to believe are essential, but ultimately go exactly nowhere.
This book doesn't know what it wants to be. One star for the writing, which is great if a little too untrammeled, and one for the interesting characters. I wish I'd passed it by, though.
Rating:
Summary: Sorry Second
Review: I have to agree with the reviewer stating that Tartt needed a better editor. How can anyone possibly compare this book with Ms. Tartt's first, The Secret History? The Little Friend was too detailed and drawn out...the novel lacked a consistent plot and the story was all over the place. I was sad to continue to the end of this novel because it was so terrible. Hopefully, we'll see an improvement from Ms. Tartt in future novels...
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing read from a once-stellar novelist
Review: I've waited 10 years for a follow-up to The Secret History... I couldn't be more disappointed.
After spending hundreds of pages discussing the murder of a young boy, Donna Tartt rambles on and on about surrounding characters, then never gets back to who actually committed the murder. The problem with this is that one of the characters actually knows what happened- she was there- but she's somehow lost in the shuffle of other activities that take over Tartt's attention. Although Tartt endlessly details the most intimate thoughts and actions of her other characters, apparently the murder witness's mind was too dull to delve into- so she doesn't. Give us something, please, even a short paragraph at the very end, to shed some insight into what happened on that fateful day that was supposedly the centerpiece of the entire book.
Also disappointing to any avid reader is the number of grammatical mistakes and just plain bad writing- Tartt apparently had the worst copy editor of all time. Details are repeated over and over again- I'm all for a good, long read, but I don't want to read the same information five times. Tighten it up, why don't you?
There are some truly great moments in this book, but you have to wade through so much detritus to get to them that it's hardly worth it.
The Secret History is one of my absolute favorite books. I'd recommend it to anyone. This book, on the other hand, makes me suspect that it took so long to write because Tartt used up all her creative energy on the first go-round.
Look for my copy of The Little Friend in a used bookstore near you.
Rating:
Summary: A masterful work about disappointment...
Review: If you're happy reading well-crafted, formula "literary" fiction, stay away. If you want to go to a more original place, read The Little Friend.The Little Friend comes from a non-conformist place, lending it freshness and some blood and guts. It questions the place and effectiveness in our culture of class, race, violence, boredom, death, friendship, "family life", religion, drug use, literacy and childhood. Bravo, Miss Tartt! The author has taken a huge risk - and some of you are disappointed. You feel she hid the ball. You think she overwrote. You wish she had a different editor. You don't get it. Sigh. Too bad. This is a genuinely amazing book, for readers who aren't passive, who remember being a child, and are prepared to go off the beaten formula-fiction path. I enjoyed it tremendously, and found that she convincingly evoked the feelings of "that summer" - the one many of us go through where we realize that we almost "understand" the grown-up world, but just aren't letting go of childhood...yet. So why are so many of you not getting it? Maybe because it is the story of one girl's summer of disappointment. A subject can register as "unpleasant" or "boring" simply because we don't always want to do the work needed to confront our own experiences. Since desire and disappointment work together, readers with big expectations can get surly I suppose. Something similar happened with Nabokov's "Lolita". Reviewers didn't understand how Nabokov modulated the prose to reflect Humbert's state of mind, taking us from the dreamy gorgeous writing of the beginning to the flat, disappointed banality of the final chapters. Result?... Right now, the novel desperately needs writers to take chances and push the envelope of the genre yet again. Editors are under increasing pressure to only take on properties that adhere to "formula". Everything gets "workshopped", urged to adhere to the same "rules" again and again. Writers congratulate themselves that they are "saleable", in denial that they have lapsed into conformity by the mighty stick-and-carrot wielded by their publishers. The result is an ocean of pseudo-literary pablum. For me, this book will stand out as one of the very best of 2002.
Rating: 
Summary: Harriet is Misunderstood and So Is This Novel
Review: In reading the customer reviews of Donna Tart's The Little Friend, I am confused. I found this book riveting. How can any one find a character as weird and wonderful as Harriet Cleve "boring"? Harriet is anything but boring. Perhaps she is misunderstood as boring because she does not act the way most readers would like her to. Harriet is a moody, brooding little girl who has lost her brother Robin in a mysterious murder and Harriet has lost her entire family to Time. Harriet must create herself in an atmosphere that includes a drugged mom, a bland older sister, and an absent father. She takes nothing on face value, including the Bible. Instead, in this queer atmosphere she is drawn toward the dark side of humanity. She is fascinated by magic - who wouldn't be, given the fact that she as a baby was present at her own brother's murder? Harriet is a vastly interesting and fully-rounded character, but perhaps many readers aren't ready for her because she isn't all roses and sunshine - she's a product of her dark situation.
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