Rating: 
Summary: Letdown
Review: I just need to agree with all the other reviewers who awarded this book just one star. I DID manage to get to the end but only because I thought such a novelist deserved commitment. But it was such a disappointing read. It's a book that starts well but quickly fades away and leave the reader quite bewildered. I agree with others when one seriously wonders if this is the same author who wrote The Secret History. Luckily I borrowed it from the library, so didn't waste my money.
Rating: 
Summary: The BEST
Review: This is the BEST book I have ever read. Or at least one of the ten best. A symphony of words and feelings -- finally, someone who depicts people the way they are and feel. And I LOVED the lack of a cozy, tightly-packaged ending. What a relief from the overdose of sucrose everything-is-right-in-the-world mundane endings. Those who gagged at the last pages of Corelli's Mandoline will know what I mean. Those who didn't -- well, just keep in mind that life doesn't always dot the i's and cross the t's...
Rating: 
Summary: I think my book is missing the last chapter....
Review: I have never read Tartt's first book - so I have no basis for comparison. However, I was extremely disappointed in this book. I found the story interesting, and I fell in love with Harriett. However - the main premise of the book is based on her brother's hanging. Little Harriett decides to find the killer. 550 pages later - we have no conclusion to our mystery, and the book ends without any kind of real *ending*. I'm either missing the last chapter, or there's a part 2 I don't know about. I doubt I'll read another Tartt novel after this. Never been so disappointed with an ending before.
Rating:
Summary: THE MOST INFURIATING BOOK I HAVE EVER READ
Review: THIS STORY HAS LEFT ME TOTALLY AT A LOSS FOR WORDS.ALTOUGH I WANTED DESPERATELY TO FINISH IT I COULD NOT.THE STORY WAS LOST IN TOO MANY OUTSIDE PERSONALITIES & PLACES. IT'S NOT FOR READERS WHO ENJOY A GOOD STORY LINE.
Rating:
Summary: the Little Friend I wish I hadn't met
Review: Sometimes I wonder what planet I'm on when I read a book so highly recommended, that turns out to be so highly overrated.This book is beautifully written. Prose is layered upon prose, beautifully descriptive of a small southern town: Harriet reminds me of Scout in "To Kill a Mockingbird," and the aunts are typical characters of early Truman Capote. You can smell the moss, and hear the drawl. You have uppity "nigras," white trailor trash, ladies who have lost the mansion, mothers who have lost their minds, abusive fathers, preachers with snakes: even Houdini!! I believe the only charactor not thrown in for extra interest is a nun on a roller coaster.
There are so many disfunctional characters in this book who are never explained that it made my head spin. This book has a lot of beginning, a ton of boring middle, and a real lack of ending. Never did figure out who the little friend was. Frankly, didn't care.
Rating:
Summary: Best fiction I've read in months
Review: I couldn't put this down. I felt as if I was 12 (like Harriet) and lying once again on the backporch swing, reading through an August afternoon while the bees buzzed in the honeysuckle on the trellis. Really.
Rating: 
Summary: Absorbing if not as masterful as you might expect
Review: This is a very hard review to write. Most people who will read The Little Friend will fit into two groups: they will either be following the hype or will have read her immensely (and deservedly) popular first novel, The Secret History. As such it's bound to get reviews full of disappointment, some which is fair some which isn't. Set in the 70's, the story concerns 12 year-old Harriet who is determined to get her revenge on the Ratliffs, the family she believes murdered her brother Robin when she was a baby. What's perhaps most odd about Tartt's novel (which took a full 10 years to write) is that whilst it's completely absorbing and never dull, there's something that's not there that you can't quite put your finger on. Of course, comparisons to her superior The Secret History, a cult novel that despite flaws is worth every inch of its status and is well worth seeking out, are all to easy. Both had rich environments that Tartt paints with a believability that is nearly unheard of among her peers; no character is too small, no background detail or memory too irrelevant to include. All of this creates the dull, dusty, road-to-nowhere-like atmosphere that comprises the Dullsville where Harriet lives, just as it did the academic surroundings in The Secret History. However, the characters in The Little Friend just aren't as interesting as those created in Tartt's previous novel. Save the fantastic Edie, and even in spite of the acute and accurate depiction of childhood personified in Harriet and best friend Hely, squared off against the adulthood of Harriet's matriarchal family, it's hard to become involved with the characters. Yet maybe this is the point, the innocence of childhood seen through the hard eyes of experience (i.e. Tartt), where exact feelings aren't tangible and issues such as life and death become overwhelming. Such passages on the nature of guilt and innocence undoubtedly comprise the novel's main themes and are also the best and worst parts of the story. Best because they are remarkably accurate and even moving in parts, worst because the distance that Tartt creates from her characters likewise doesn't allow us to empaphise with them much. However, even this could be seen as a point of the novel, with a lack of a redemptive ending and a jumble of emotions that are never sorted out leading to an uneasy reading of a book which seems to be most concerned with innocence versus experience in a world full of both the stereotypes and conventions Harriet learns through the adventure stories she loves so much, as well as the rotten core of society inherent in the drug-addled and aggressive Ratliff family. Without doubt this is an assured novel and one that is certainly interesting and a good read. Although it may not be quite as good as The Secret History, it's the kind of story that gets better when looked back at, full of intricacies and the kind of attention to detail that escapes many authors. Tartt has produced another winner, even if it isn't as hard-hitting as you might expect.
Rating:
Summary: Stunningly Bad
Review: At the end of _The Secret History_, I was disappointed to find that the newest literary genius had written a rather engaging potboiler, if not much else. Still, I considered it a good first novel, and a compelling--if showy--novel.
Then came this monstrosity.
Showing the daring brilliance of Caleb Carr or Steve Martini, Donna Tartt's _The Little Friend_ is a sad little tale that starts out with a glimmer of promise and ends like a movie of the week. It's sad, shopworn characters and tired, threadbare cliches are neither insightful nor entertaining. This is a boring book with bad diction and a thoroughly disappointing ending. Just ...pitiable throughout.
The worst part may be that the first book was a potboiler dressed as a novel. This time, it's not even dressed up, and Tartt doesn't even give a resolution. Ambiguity is essential in good novels. Unfortunately, Tartt didn't write one.
Don't read this book on a dare. Run away.
Rating:
Summary: Call an editor please!
Review: Donna Tartt can write, but can she tell a story? This book contains fascinating details of southern living, but it does so at the expense of what could have been a riveting tale. The story of a young girl searching for her brother's killer. That is the marketing for this book. Intriguing, right? Sadly, it felt more to me like a children's book. The story of a young girl struggling to understand life. Surrounded by her elderly aunts and her dysfunctional mother the little girl fights to come to terms with a world that is changing all around her. Ms. Tartt's descriptive prose has a keen edge. But her ability to weave this story together fails. She allows herself to go deeply into the details of people's lives that do nothing to move forward the story of the little girl's search for her brother's killer. The countless paragraphs of description of the Aunts and the speed addicts gave me the feeling that I was sinking. I was sinking in attractive verbage but I was sinking nonetheless. In the end, when Ms. Tartt unsuccessfully attempts to tie the story together, I still don't know what the young girl truly realized from her journey. This was a VERY unsatisfying read.
Rating: 
Summary: Fabulous Writing does NOT Make Up for a frustrating Plot.
Review: I cannot believe how cheated I felt after finishing this extremely long book. The implicit promise in the first fifty pages -- haunting, evocative and beautifully written -- is that the reader will find out who murdered the heroine's little brother. Nearly 600 pages later, we find out nothing. The meandering storyline leaves little settled. Harriet's family is more of a mess at the end than it was before. What of the older sister, Allison? What did she see? What of Harriet's father?? Where are they going to live? And what of the criminal Ratliffe's? Chapter after chapter of pointles detail is left in the first half of the book -- explicit descriptions of really minor characters -- while important parts of the main story leave the reader hanging in mid air at the end. I get it, about the small southern town and the social forces at work in it, but I cannot believe the author meant for it to be this confusing and unsatisfying. If she did,if it isn't just bad editing, then she has forgotten the first rule of writing: tell us a STORY.
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