Rating: 
Summary: Where's the rest
Review: Impeccably done. Vivid descriptions, beautiful insight, technically perfect, absolutlely believable - where the hell is the ending?
Rating:
Summary: A daunting but ultimately worthwhile Magnum Opus
Review: In the closing pages of Donna Tartt's controversial, 555 page novel THE LITTLE FRIEND the main character Harriet muses, in her hospital bed, at the end of her futile search for her brother's unsolved murderer (in quoting Captain Scott's Antarctic final thoughts) 'that victory and collapse were sometimes the same thing.' And it seems to this reader that this postulate may be the summation of Tartt's second, much anticipated novel. Though at times lugubrious and meandering to the point of losing the story line, Tartt ultimately demonstrates once again that she is a fine artist painting from a rich palette and creating a massive symphony of words and ideas that beg comparison to such greats as Flannery O'Connor and Gustav Mahler. Strange bedfellows? Perhaps in the Mahler column, but as far as O'Connor similarities are concerned the works mesh well: both are concerned with the darker side of each of us, of nightmarish consequences to everyday decisions, of the bizarre malfunctions of man in nature. The comparison to Mahler symphonic structure may be more illusive...until you listen to a long Mahler opus, ride through his sidecars of folksong simplicity and grandiose Olympian climaxes, spiritual sublimation coupled with fist-shaking defiance of the heavens, and arrive at the end with a message that is strangely of your own choosing.Tartt knows the aura, flavor, smarmy reality, and quixotic delusions of the South: she hails form Mississippi where she has set this story. She creeps into the minds and imaginations of the people who populate her book - the remaining class differences, the poverty of soul in families that were once grand but have fallen in monetary deficit, the tattooed permanence of the perception of the African American, the Rednecks and the Bible thumpers alike. Tartt is a lover of words and knows well how to sculpt atmosphere, character, language and suspense. The story is essentially that of a 12 year old miscreant of a child who embarks on the journey to prove that she knows the identiy of the murderer of her brother, hanged when she a baby, a murder which has inalterably changed her immediate family, her extended family, and the population of Alexandria, Mississippi. A murder that remains unsolved. How she forges through her convictions proves a mixture of Joan of Arc, of Don Quixote, and the Mad Woman of Chaillot! This skeletal outline is embellished with a richness of detail that many readers who want a quick, full-throttle detective tale have found irritatingly long-winded. But there is the point of departure for Donna Tartt's similarity to other contemporary writers. In the long run she seems more interested in the telling of the story than in the story itself, which may be why many readers feel that too many ideas are left unresloved. Tartt ends her novel of very grand schemes and diversions with a kind of personal soliloquy that is more in line with the way life just goes on, whether with reasons of consequences resolved or left for interpretation or dissolution into everlasting mystery. Reading Donna Tartt requires a block of time, unrushed, of pledged indulgence. Try reading her aloud and more of the magic surfaces. A quick book with a terse tale this isn't. And therein lies the beauty.
Rating: 
Summary: The worst book I've ever read
Review: After finishing this very tedious and overly-hyped book, I am convinced that the book that I purchased had the wrong book jacket on it. While I thought about giving up on it everytime I opened, I stuck with it figuring it must get better. Unfortunately I seemed to have missed the climax AND the closure. I can safely say that this is the worst book I have ever read.
Rating: 
Summary: "The Little Friend"
Review: I am not a writer but a lover of books! This one drew me in and didn't let go till the last page. The story is astounding and her characters so well developed. I have lots of patience when I read and did not think it slow. It was like eatting a great meal and savoring every bite! I could taste the dusty town and smell all the quirky people.As far as finding out who-done-it...it's not really that important. Great job Donna Tartt.
Rating: 
Summary: Tartt Not Sweet
Review: After what seemed like months of hype in magazines, book reviews and NPR, I was chomping at the bit to read The Little Friend. About half way through the book I began to wonder if all those critics had been given a different edition to read. The story idea is interesting, but the characters are wooden and the prose is awkward--a fine literary vocabulary, but decidedly lacking in finesse. I'd recommend Swan by Frances Mayes as an alternate read.
Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Review: I was so relieved when I finished this book! I was on a waiting list at the library for it so I was eager to read it, but I must say it was tedious reading. I wanted to give up several times but thought I should continue, so I was quite dissapointed when I came to the end and nothing was resolved. I soon tired of Harriet's sullenness. Although the other characters were well written, there was no pay-off.
If you have a lot of time on you hands, go ahead and try it, otherwise I think you should pass on this one.
Rating:
Summary: I read it twice
Review: The Little Friend is possibly the best contemporary fiction I've read in a very long time. The descriptions, the wording, the insight into human nature all take precedence over the plot itself. Descriptions, smells, the powerlessness of being 12 are portrayed honestly but in such delectable language that I had a hard time turning off the light at night, to sleep. When I finished the book I immediately started over and found more depth and richness and laughter than the first time. The unveiling of Harriet and Healy's murder investigation is appropriately brought to light after we learn things about the characters themselves. This feels right. It's the story of real people, not a suspense read nor an action-adventure--although there's action aplenty as the pace increases. The humor and enigmatic behaviour of youth make Harriet's story accessible and gripping. We've all been 12 before. I'm a fan of real life. Important events in our lives do not always result in good. Wisdom comes with time. Innocence betrayed is difficult to adjust to, and so we survive the betrayals, always wishing for innocence, a trait we shake our heads about but wish we could once again attain. Thus, the end of The Little Friend is honest and true. I would dearly love to find out what happens to Harriet and Ida, Healy and Danny, but I suppose I'll have to wait 10 years to see what secrets, laughter, wry observations, and nostalgia Donna Tartt again has to offer.
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Summary: Please do not go by the jacket
Review: I started reading Tartt with this book. So, I am just going by what I felt with this one experience. I was intrigued to read the book because of the gist on the jacket, and please do not make the same mistake. They are trying to sell a story that does not exist within its 555 pages. Extremely disappointing!! It clearly starts off with a little boy's death by hanging. But, then the novel is just about the people in the family. I usually enjoy when the characters are dealt with in great detail and get immense satisfaction when everything about the setting, and the place is explained to the last dot. But, unfortunately, though so many pages and words have gone into this novel, there is no satisfaction at the end. I would have been happy to accept that the little boy's mystery death is never solved in the novel, had I gotten the pleasure of reading about everything else. But, that is not the case. Neither is the mystery present (which the jacket claims), nor is there substance to quench my laborious read. I very patiently read through more than 300 pages, and was very disappointed, and then to reach the end started to skim through. I read a lot, and never have I done that before. I am really curious now to see what she had to offer in 'Secret History'. I am going to read that next. Donna Tartt is not a storyteller, because 'The Little Friend' is not a story. I guess with the 10 years that went into making this novel, Donna Tartt completely lost track of what she wanted to tell her audience.
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Summary: Telling it like it is -
Review: I believe this is one of the best contemporary Southern novels I have ever read. I admit the beginning is a little slow, and I was a little wary after all the negative reviews I had read online, but this book wrapped itself around my mind like kudzu. I studied much Southern Lit in college and am a MS native, and I am telling you she hits the nail on the head with way she describes what it is like to grow up white middle class in a small town in the South. Lots of time hanging around swimming pools, being bored to death and trying to have an adventure. Tartt employs many of the same themes that run througout Faulkner's novels. Harriet's family has lost its plantation home, there are no men to carry on the family name. Most of the characters are unable to live in the present. The death of Harriet's brother Robin has suspended time. Through the portrayal of Harriet's relationship with her black maid, Ida, Tartt is able to reveal the guilt-ridden consciousness that many whites in Mississippi have, including myself. Tartt delves into the relations between different social classes of whites, a favorite theme of Faulkners. This book is the stuff of great literature. It requires analysis and reflection, and it helps if you have been exposed to Faulkner and Welty, so you can pick up on all the strands that Tartt is leaving us readers to follow.
Rating:
Summary: Tartt lays an egg
Review: Alfred A. Knopf publishers really deserve to put a warning label on the jacket of this deathly dull dud of a novel: CAUTION MAY INDUCE SLEEP! They also should be held liable for their outright misrepresentation of this book as a thriller/mystery. It is neither. But I guess they need to lie in order to make back their money. Tartt seems to have gotten carried away with the sound of her own pen - she writes in longhand apparently, though it doesn't make this book any better - but too much of a "good" thing is truly bad. Tartt can't make up her mind whether she's a commercial authoress or an academic. I hope she goes for the former and not the latter! Yuck.
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