Rating: 
Summary: Re-read "The Secret History" instead
Review: I eagerly awaited the arrival of Tartt's second novel, having consumed "The Secret History" one summer during a several day train trip in Canada. Alas, "The Little Friend" is a bore. The suspense, intellectualness, and overall excellence of "The Secret History" is all but missing from her latest effort. Tartt fans won't want to believe that her followup novel could be so far off the literary mark (I'm still surprised by how disappointed I am), but you really are better off re-reading "The Secret History" rather than buying or borrowing "The Little Friend". I have my fingers crossed that her third novel is closer in quality to her first effort.
Rating: 
Summary: Duck Hunting in May?
Review: I too began this book thinking it would end with a murder solved. However, half-way through the book I realized Tartt would not reward us so simply. And that is precisely the point. This book is about the way a bright young girl deals with the boredom and anxiety presented to her by an empty summer and "no one at home". The fact that there is no "ending" is entirely appropriate, as there will be no ending for Harriet. Her life will forever be affected by her brother's death and its effect on her family. It does not matter who killed Robin. A note to the editor though: isn't duck hunting season long gone by Mother's day?
Rating:
Summary: Gad-zeeks! What's going on here?
Review: Hello? Is anyone home at Harriet's house? What about Donna Tartt's house? This book was really disappointing. Empty characters in empty rooms. Plotless narrative and banal dialogue that leads no where at all. I read an interview with Donna Tartt somewhere after I had finished the book (is there anywhere were she hasn't been interviewed?) and I was astonsihed to read that she said that novels should have something going on in them, that their main purpose is to be entertaining and that there should be a strong plot and an adventure story - and that novels should not pretend to be literary! Is she kidding? Did she read The Little Friend when she finished writing it? Believe me, there is no plot, no adventure and it's not entertaining. Plus, it strains very hard to be literary and it just seems contrived and cloying - just like an Southern woman past her prime.
Rating:
Summary: Hugely Disappointing
Review: As one who read Tartt's first book and much enjoyed it, I was looking forward to The Little Friend. What a disappointment it was, and I say this not because it didn't adhere to the classical form of the murder mystery. I didn't expect that it would or should.
Why wasn't this book edited? Most of the middle section could have been eliminated; it served no artistic purpose: it didn't advance the narrative, nor did it enhance the character development. The Ratliff family could have been established as trash in 20 pages, tops. The ending was contrived; it's as if the author couldn't think of any way to get out of the situation she'd created and just took the path of least resistance. Numerous plot flaws. Loose ends. You get the picture.
Rating:
Summary: Harriet's soul mate writes a review of The Little Friend
Review: I'm glad to see that many readers despise this book. I'm going to go hold my breath now.
Rating: 
Summary: Tartt ¿ or just soured?
Review: Wish I had read all these reviews before I bought this book! TSH was one of my favorite books of the nineties. I thought it was original, completely intriguing reading and we had - at last! - a contemporary writer with a fresh voice and something new to say. When I saw TLF, I picked it up without a second thought. As a creative person myself, I do not believe it is fair to compare someone's works as they are always evolving and changing, but this book baffled me. I found it exactly the opposite of TSH, plodding, slow, unoriginal and derivative of so many other books I have read before. I kept waiting for something to happen! Tartt is obviously a talented writer, but where was the editor here? The dust jacket touts it as a murder mystery, but the real mystery is there was very little about the murder at all! 555 pages and never resolved. Some of the characters were interesting, but I found some, like the sister, totally superfluous. The well-off female family contrasted with the low-down male family - yawn! Seen it before done better. And the excruciating details. Were six pages really necessary to describe Harriet and Hely breaking into the house? The cultural references were all over the timeline of the 70s, as another reveiwer stated. The water tower scene was good, but there just wasn't enough of this caliber to make TLF worthwhile. It could easily have been tightened by 200 pages. I hope Tartt is not a one-hit wonder and winds up another Anne Rice - I haven't finished one of her dreary efforts in years and don't even buy them anymore. I will certainly think twice and read all reviews before I spend good money on another Tartt book. Very disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Tarnation! This book misses the mark.
Review: I love to read and I love long novels more than anything, if they're good. Having enjoyed The Secret History, I looked forward to losing myself in The Little Friend. But almost from the start, I found it a struggle to stay awake. My grocery list and phone calls I had to make kept coming to mind as I tried to focus on this book. I simply couldn't maintain concentration. This has not happened to me for years. I do not need a lot of action in a novel, but I do need some momentum. The Little Friend has no forward drive, and there is no pay-off. Yes, I did get the feeling that Donna Tartt is in love with her own voice. Her mistake is assuming that everyone else will love it as much as she does. I wanted so much to love this book, and to like the main character Harriet, but it simply did not pull me in. Not only has Tartt left out her ending, she has also left out the core of this book, the soul. It's like a five hundred page doily, lots of frills with no center. It reminds me of a parody of feverish Southern writing.
Rating:
Summary: To Kill a Mockingbird look alike , Set in the 70's
Review: If I had not read all the rave reviews over this, my expectations might not have been so high, and I wouldn't have been so disappointed. This is a look alike of To Kill a Mockingbird (names of characters have been changed to "protect the innocent"-and perhaps to avoid questions of plagarism)so,I'm not sure why this book/story was 10 years in the making. Tartt does have a way with words, but the lack of originality was surprising. If you haven't read To Kill A Mockingbird, then this may be new territory for you-it is not totally without merit. If your still curious, check the book out from your local library,borrow from a friend, or wait for the paperback.
Rating: 
Summary: A second novel that compares well with the first
Review: Two things right off the bat: 1) Once again (as with The Secret History) Ms. Tartt kept me reading her novel right to the end, even though 2) I have rarely come across a group of characters who are less sympathetic than those who people these pages. Like The Secret History, The Little Friend begins with a death, though this time it is possible that the death was accidental not a murder. What follows are the parallel histories of two very dysfuntional families: one is the middle-class (with upper-middle pretentions) extended family of the dead child, the other, (whose lives wierdly intersect with the first's) is a lower-class bunch who live in a group of trailers and that includes felons, a grandmother who has been terminally ill for decades, and a would-be preacher who questions his calling because he proves to be inept as a snake-handler. Like The Secret History, there is a complete cast of fully-fleshed walk-ons. Tartt tells The Secret History from one character's viewpoint, thus coloring all events and people with his perceptions of them. She narrates The Little Friend from multiple viewpoints, so that throughout -- and at the end -- the reader knows more about what is happening (and why) than any single character, though, in actuality, the reader is not always sure what he does and doesn't know. That in itself is not a problem; what is a problem is that the characters are not communicating with each other, even when they think they are. That makes for some very uncomfortable reading, in which the reader -- at least this one -- wants to shout at the page: "For God's sake, why aren't you all listening to each other?" And then, if that weren't enough, we have Harriet, that dear, confused, pre-pubescent child who never seems able to say what she wants to say, and often says (or does) what she desn't want. Even allowing for her disfunctional mother (whose reaction to her sons death back on page one was to go to be for the next decade), her domineering Grandmother (whom she resembles in more than looks), her three aunts (really great-aunts, all of whom have more than a little of the post-bellum south about them: Slightly impoverished, but cultivated, none-the-less), her desperately-in-need-of-psychiatric-care sister, and her absentee father...even allowing for all of that, she is a very unlikeable child. Why can't she say what she really thinks to the long-suffering hired woman, Ida Rhew? Why must she be so horribly mean to the poor little LaSharon (one character who, though not particularly likeable, is at least admirable for trying to improve herself, even though she doesn't seem to have a clue how to do it). And, why on earth does she decide that Danny is the murderer, based on nothing by a chance remark? Why? Because she's a mixed up little girl going through a difficult time in any girl's life and desperately in need of guidance and quite a bit of tender attention -- which she is not getting. In short, she is a very real character, as are most of the people who pass through these pages. That is Donna Tartt's gift, she sees life and she records it. She doesn't ask us to like it, she just hands it to us and lets us make of it what we will. An author who can do that must be very trusting of her readership. As I wrote at the on-set, I finished the book, even though several times, I was ready to put it down in sheer frustration with what was happening on the pages, including once when I was 80% finished (page 421, to be exact). However, whether I wanted to see how it all turned out (which, ultimately, I didn't -- once again, Ms. Tartt proves to be a mysterious writer as well as a mystery writer), whether I wanted to see if I liked Harriet any more than I did (which I didn't), or whether I just wanted to finish what I had started (which I did), whatever the reason, I finished and, as with The Secret History, have pondered what I read for a couple of days now. (I also went back and re-read the prologue, which had an entirely different meaning after I had completed the book.) One peculiarity, which other reviewers have noted: I couldn't figure out when this was supposed to be taking place. Edie drives a car from the late '50s which is twenty years old, but the writing on the water tower (Class of 1970) has worn off from years of weather. The TV references seem to be early 70s, but there is also a reference to the non-gay player being chosen for a ball team, which does not seem to be a phrase one would have heard from an elementary school child in small-town Mississippi in the early 70s. Although an editor could have and should have made some sense of those references, they were not sufficient to destroy the authenticity of the sense of (southern) place. Once again, a provocative novel from Ms. Tartt. (But, please, could there be at least one likeable character next time?)
Rating:
Summary: An enjoyable read
Review: Reading the reviews posted by other readers, I have noticed that most people who disliked this book incessantly compare it to "The Secret History", Tartt's first novel. I think that it is important to remember that "The Little Friend" was not written as a sequel to "The Secret History". I read both books back to back, starting with "The Secret History", and can honestly say that I enjoyed both of them. I found "The Little Friend" to be highly enjoyable, with interesting and well drawn characters. I was especially drawn to the relationships between Ida Rhew and Harriet, and Harriet and Hely. I do agree that the abrupt ending was a bit frustrating since it did not give me any clue about what might happen with these characters, hence the four stars out of five. I think that readers would be well advised to take "The Little Friend" as a separate book in it's own right, and not compare it to "The Secret History".
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