Rating: 
Summary: Nancy Drew meets Harriet the Spy in beautiful prose
Review: Disappointing 500+ pages of gorgeously written but improbable and uninteresting story. Too bad the main character is 12 and named Harriet. I could not suspend my disbelief long enough to believe a 12 year old would engage in most of the activities I read about for hundreds of pages. I kept hoping a real story would emerge amongst the masterfully developed elderly sisters or the split and saddened family of Harriet. After the intense and complex psychology of a Secret History I found the motivations, antics and "suspense" of this new book underwhelming and at times formulaic. When she's hiding under a chair we get her view of the floor, if she's in the woods we get a leaf by leaf description, twice we are made aware of the mud rings on the warehouse door - memorable enough the first time to notice them a second time several hundred pages later. If you liked Nancy Drew.....
Rating: 
Summary: Fails To Impress
Review: I'm likely one of the few reviewers here that has not read "The Secret History" (I still intend to). Perhaps that is a good thing, as I approached the "The Little Friend" with no pre-conceived notions about Ms Tartt's ability to write. I am left with no doubt about her ability to write, and write and write and therein lies part of the problem. This book could easily have been trimmed by a couple of hundred pages, and likely been far better for it. I have no problem with detail, but copious quantities of it that seem to have no purpose other than to fill the page... well that just seems like a lot of filler to me. Another reviewer said this book kept putting them to sleep, and I confess I had the same reaction, usually I'm good for hours of steady reading, with this one 20 minutes and my eyelids were drooping, not a good sign. When a book is over 500 pages in length it better be able to hold my attention, this one did not. I never cared for any of the characters, even Harriet our protagonist got on my nerves. So readers, I'm with the consensus on this one, not a stellar work on any level.
Rating:
Summary: A big disappointment
Review: This novel was a huge disappointment, especially since it's been described as a masterpiece in the literary media. While well written the descriptive passages run on too long. Little Harriet Defresnes is out to solve her brother's murder but the authors spends an inordinant amount of time exploring the personality quirks Harriet's relatives. At the end of 555 pages we still don't know who murdered 9 year old Robin Dufresnes so what was the point of even reading this book? For the cover price it'd be nice to see the mystery solved or have a little closure. Instead we're left with an unsolved murder and a family that is even more dysfunctional than it was in Chapter one. Over all, reading this book was waste of time.
Rating: 
Summary: Intelligent or just arrogant?
Review: There once was a precocious young writer who was paid an awful lot of money for her dazzling first book. Her age, the money, the stylish prose and elite subject matter - it all came together. Lo and behold, the young lady got older. The pressures for a follow-up got more intense. Her absence created a minor literary legend. She had a lot to live up to. Now she's back, and lo and behold - she's no longer gamine, her advance is old news, and the new book? Well, it doesn't exactly rock. In fact, it creaks. Just like one of her high-falutin' literary metaphors. The middle-aged authoress appears to have taken to wearing a lot of black, antique clothes - and a severe Louise Brooks hairstyle. Who died? The message? "I am a great writer." Well, the proof ain't in the puddin', sugah. Not this here puddin' anyway. The Little Friend is a little book masquerading as a big, sprawling epic, and littered with brainy name-droppin's from the classics. Tartt is bent on cementing her place up there with Twain and Dreiser and Eliot. But judging from this, she doesn't have the originality of her ostensible "predecessors." To Kill a Mockingbird meets River's Edge meets Summer & Smoke meets Tarantino meets Nancy Drew meets you name it. Isolation clearly hasn't helped Ms. Tartt perfect her art. Another ten years? Lordy, I shudder to think! Get thee to a writing program! There's still hope, sistuh woman!
Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I was hooked into the book immediately. I read several books per week, but found this book to be very disappointing. I haven't a clue what this author was trying to tell us. It is unfortunate because the writing and suspense was for the most part superb! The book didn't end....it did not leave you hoping for more (unless you are like me and wanted to understand what the past 700 pages were supposed to climax into!) It has been a long time since I have been this disappointed in a book. If someone could explain to me what Harriet learned from the torture she experienced, I would love to hear from you!
Rating:
Summary: Where's an editor when you need one?
Review: I loved Tartt's The Secret History. I looked forward to The Little Friend. I didn't expect TSH II; just a good, provocative read. I was disappointed. Pages and pages are mind-numbingly boring. The book should properly be two stories: 1)the speed freak rednecks, preachers and hallucinagenic meth imagery (which wears thin)and 2)the somehat sociopathic Harriet's story. I enjoy Southern literature, but this book was all over the place, and halfway into it I began to dislike every character. Harriett has little to recommend her, nor does her sister Allison. The other characters seemed flat, boring and tedious.(Very difficult to keep the aunts sorted out)I admire Ms. Tartt's writing abilities, but this book is confusing and ultimately, and sadly, unrewarding. She obviously put a great deal into it, but from the 2nd or 3rd page on I was wondering why this book was not heavily edited. In order to slog through it I had to skim dozens of boring pages to get back on track with the real story. (And I'm not real sure what that story was--a "coming of age story?") The book could use major revions. I've been reading a book a day since I was 7; (more than 4 decades)this was a waste of time and money. If you're willing to read it, wait until it comes out in paperback. That said, hats off to Ms. Tartt for an ambitious novel. I hope she tries again.
Rating:
Summary: Tartt is capable of much better
Review: I wasn't expecting A Little Friend to be like A Secret History, which I enjoyed very much. Recognizing that Tartt had only recently graduated from college when her first novel debuted, I expected her second novel to be about more mature, deeper themes.What I didn't expect is 500 plus pages of off-stage character studies, painfully boring and endless descriptions and uncalled for bigotry ". . . she did not actually believe that every word of the Bible was true . . . that, deep down, Negroes were exactly the same as white people." There appears to be an unfortunate trend these days in publishing. When a writer garners as much acclaim as Tartt did with her first novel editors become reticent to criticize. As a writer with five published books, I know how sharp an editor's pencil can be and believe me, if you are unpublished and submitting your first manuscript those pencils can draw blood. Tartt's editor apparently made the gross error of believing that his or her author's reputation would suffice and that readers are so lemming-like that books would fly off the shelves regardless of how tedious A Little Friend turned out to be. Besides the fact that I don't find old biddies and creamed chicken over biscuits very exciting, the flaws in this book are numerous and dire. Much of the story takes place off stage (the reader is told the story rather than being drawn into the story and swept away by the action that is occurring). The scenes are so convoluted with description that it is impossible to decipher what the storyteller was trying to convey, and worse, many of the scenes just seemed like colorful filler, with no real purpose in moving the story forward. Most fatal was the fact that I felt zero emotion for, nor did I identify with any of the characters. Tartt's writing is literary I suppose, and there are critics who will proclaim the brilliance of this book (sighing impatient breaths as each page heavily turns). But the fact is that she got caught up in her ego, trying to be a writer from another time and unfortunately for her, times have changed and so have readers' tastes. I can't imagine that sales will be very inspiring after word gets out how dull this book is. However, I hope that Tartt will not give up. She is talented and I would even go so far as to say that she possibly possesses genius. Hopefully she can channel the pain of this failure into the emotionally moving book that she is capable of writing.
Rating:
Summary: DISAPPOINTED
Review: I am one of the many lovers of "The Secret History" and have, like most of you, waited for Donna Tartt's new book for 10 years. To say I'm disappointed is almost an understatement. "The Little Friend" is a boring book with dull characters, filled with stereotype after stereotype. The story goes nowhere, and as the reader it is hard to stay interested or concerned about any of the characters, especially Harriet! I have to force myself to read it everyday and I'm not sure if I can even finish it. I've tried to give it chance. I wanted to love this book. What happened Donna Tartt??
Rating:
Summary: We've waited ten years for THIS?
Review: "The Little Friend" is a 250 page story in a 550 page book and
the publishers should be sued for leading us to believe that this is a mystery, which is not. Look, I loved "The Secret History" and a lot of Tartt's shorter work. Her ode to Willie Morris is one of the most touching things that I've ever read. But, this latest thing is horrible. About the only thing that I can appreciate about the book is her
dead on sense of Southern dialect and dialogue. Other than that, nothing. I hate the characters and I suspect that she's not really crazy about them herself, ambivalent at best. Sorry. Maybe in a another ten years she'll come with something that will be worthy of her time and ours because "The Little Friend" is certainly not.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and depressing
Review: Boy, what a disappointment. After waiting years for Donna Tartt's next book, I snatched this tome up the minute it came out. Although Tartt's writing is still sharply observed and her phrasing crystalline, there's no real narrative arc here, and the situations in the book are unrelentingly miserable and depressing. It's very difficult to write about boredom, alienation, and abandonment without making your readers want to slit their own wrists in despair, and unfortunately, Tartt's book doesn't succeed. And the mystery promised in the opening prologue is never solved--we never find out who killed Robin, which, after 500+ pages, seemed like a rip-off.
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