Rating: 
Summary: More of Secret History
Review: The Secret History was a wonderful surprise. It was an excellent, enthralling read which I couldn't put down. The follow up was different in many ways. It was a little long, a little less interesting and not a patch on the first work. The characters though well developed did not evoke my interest. There was little sympathy or empathy with any of them. An interesting idea for a book but ultimately led to a feeling of what was the point?
Tartt is a wonderful writer. The book is not bad, it just wasn't my taste. For the type of book it was someone like Carl Hiassen does it much better.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the plot?
Review: After wading through 500-plus pages of poor imitation Proust, I was sorely disappointed with the unsatisfying denouement. Tartt seems conflicted; is she a commercial writer or an artiste? Is she literary or entertainment-oriented. With this, she's neither. It simply does not add up to a cohesive whole, and it asks a lot of any reader to make excuses for her not-so-little shortcomings. The Little Friend has little to offer to any kind of reader. The commercial aspect is a ..., and the literary aspect is forced, tries too had to be "great." I wouldn't wish this on the most patient librarian!
Rating:
Summary: The long wait is over...your sleep problems are solved!!!
Review: I am a major Secret History fan and waited anxiously for the arrival of this new work. I was impressed with the first 50 pages - the evocation of mood was incredible and I was prepared to plow through the book at lightning speed. By page 100 something bizarre started happening. My eyelids began to droop. I thought it was a fluke and laid the book aside. The next day it happened again; within 20 pages I was dead asleep and drooling on the pages! Still in denial, I continued this ritual for almost a week. One Friday night I fell asleep 3 separate times, each time wrenching my eyelids open to begin again. Finally, defeated, I had to admit to myself and others -THIS BOOK IS JUST PLAIN BORING! I was devastated! Too many words, very overwrought and overly dramatic, and just plain dull. Even editing the number of sentences that include the word "ferocious" could have reduced the tome by 25 pages! Ah, well, 10 more years isn't really that long to wait for the next one...
Rating:
Summary: A whole lot of nothing going on.
Review: I am just completely baffled that the author of "The Secret History" could have written such a pointless and unsophisticated book. I could not put "The Secret History" down. I cared about its lonely narrator even as he was drawn into this fantastic and terrible group of friends. That book was witty, allusive and self-conscious.
This book devotes an entire chapter to the death of the family cat as though that really were a significant event. Some reviewers suggest that there is some kind of social commentary on racial injustice going on here. Are they kidding? These characters came right out of "Gone with the Wind." This is like 555 pages of Nancy Drew. Twelve year olds are just not that interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: Gothic horrors in Magnolia-land.
Review: Weird happenings within an even weirder family combine with the "fusty, drunken perfume of Magnolia" to fill this southern Gothic novel with bizarre behavior and pervasive threats of death and revenge. Forces of evil are at work, according to Charlotte Cleve, a mother of three, who believes the mysterious hanging death of her nine-year-old son Robin resulted because she changed her traditional Mother's Day celebration from noon to six o'clock on the day he died.Twelve years after Robin's death, his fiercely independent sister Harriet, now twelve herself, investigates the circumstances of Robin's death, bent on identifying and punishing his murderer. Bearing little resemblance to Scout, the endearing heroine of To Kill a Mockingbird, single-minded Harriet recognizes no limits and is willing to do anything, including using a gun, to accomplish her goals. Confronting ex-cons who run a crystal meth lab, ditsy great-aunts who know what's "right," redneck children who lurk in the bushes, two snake-handling preachers, a mother who turns her house into a maze filled with piles of rotting, old newspapers, and a sister who sleeps seventeen hours a day ("I only get bored when I'm awake," she says), Harriet takes more comfort from her plans for revenge than from traditional southern values. Tartt's themes of death and punishment achieve some sense of universality through her use of numerous symbols and parallels, often with animals, but these are frequently sentimental. The euthanasia of a beloved pet cat; Harriet's accidental killing of a blackbird stuck in tar, snakes handled by hillbilly preachers; and the vicious dogs of the Ratliff family haunt the narrative. The old family home is called Tribulation; Harriet's heroes are Sherlock Holmes, Harry Houdini, and Captain Scott, the explorer; and she spends much of the novel looking for a pair of red gloves given to her by her black housekeeper, whom she loves but treats with casual cruelty. The plot strains credulity, even for southern Gothic, and Harriet, as a twelve-year-old protagonist, is too wild and out-of-control to inspire much empathy as a character. The narrative focus of the novel gets lost, and many episodes, only peripherally related to the original search for justice, seem to become narrative ends in themselves. Filled with dense imagery and melodrama, this novel will appeal to those looking for fast escape reading. Mary Whipple
Rating:
Summary: Laborious and bursting at the seams
Review: I simply agree with all that has been said beforehand on the overblown and mindless prose. There is hardly any character development and is bursting at the seams with tartty racism and a patronizing attitude. A horrific second novel. Stick to secret history and do not see the movie when it is made.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad, buuuuut...
Review: Like many of you, I couldn't wait to get my hands on The Little Friend, having been absolutely captivated by The Secret History when it came out ten years ago. I finished TLF last night and I won't say I was disappointed, but I wasn't as overwhelmed and anxious to devour the novel again and again as I was with TSH. At first, I really enjoyed the descriptions of the South and was very much drawn to the feisty and headstrong Harriet. For the first few chapters, I thought I was enjoying this novel even more than TSH. However, by the time I got to the halfway point, I too felt like I had seen many of the characters in other works, especially Edie, Ida, and Charlotte. While I thought they were "well-drawn" and in places interesting, original is not a word I would use to describe the majority of the characters. Additionally, in places I found the book to be suspensful and exciting and I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen, but at the exact same time I found many of those suspensful points to be, well, silly. Yes, silly. I even found myself skimming parts here and there simply because I felt I already KNEW what she was saying. There was no skimming with TSH, that's for sure! On a positive note, I actually did like the very end. Right at first I thought "that can't be it, I waited a whole decade for that??" But then the more I thought about it, I liked the fact that there was no clear resolution and Harriet was left with a somewhat "empty" feeling and, I think, matures a bit and *maybe* will begin to understand why the adults dealt with Robin's death the way they did. No easy solution, no way to get revenge, and things aren't always what they seem. Overall I enjoyed TLF (especially when not thinking of TSH) and highly recommend it to Tartt fans, despite the flaws.
Rating: 
Summary: More than a mystery novel....
Review: I have been surprised by such negative ratings! You may not like this book, but it has some beautiful, evocative prose and dead-on dialogue...and I wonder if giving it"one star" is really more a reflection of a reader's disappointment based on certain expectations more than a rating of the book in general. I enjoyed the author's previous work, The Secret History, even though I had problems "believing" in those characters. Despite this, I found that I didn't want to put that book down. When I was done reading it, I felt I had been transported to another place and time, and wanted to discuss the book with anyone within earshot. Now, after reading The Little Friend, I feel the same way. I believe that the author has the ability to write books that sweep the reader away into the world that she has created. Is TLF perfect? No. But this is a wonderful, moody, dark book that leaves you wanting to "talk about it" with others. (Always a good sign in my opinion.)
Mind you, this isn't a page turner, and normally if I heard a reviewer say that I would not buy a book....but in this case I think that is a mistake. Tartt spends a lot of time developing the background and mood for this story. And it pays off. It took me a few days to finish the book, but I was always looking forward to getting back to it. I do recommend this book, but suggest that you don't finish this book just prior to bedtime...because this book leaves you with a lot to think about. This is a lot more than a "mystery" book, and if you read it as such you might be disappointed. This a book about life, and "loss"...the loss of those we love, the loss of childhood and innocence... and how our actions, sometimes based on misunderstandings, can reek such destruction and chaos. Start reading this book, and if you aren't "hooked" right away, then this may not be the book for you. But if you enjoy Tartt's prose and descriptions, and find yourself swept away into Tartt's world, than you are in for a wonderful reading experience.
Rating: 
Summary: At last!
Review: After reading Ms. Tartt's first novel, I eagerly awaiting this book that was a very long time in coming. I have not been disappointed. The story of 12-year old Harriet's search for the killer of her brother, Robin (a murder that happened when Harriet was only 6 weeks old) is richly presented, with so many wonderfully drawn characters. I, too, laughed till I almost cried and the snake scene. And even though the Ratliff brothers are truly American gothic-deliverance sorts, the author even made one feel a sort of pity for them. Grandmother "Gum" was just awful. The sense that these people were constantly told by her not to be above themselves, that her daddy used to say that he couldn't imagine why a grown man would sit down with a book, that a college scholarship was just a setup for a downfall and humiliation. . . this was a manipulative, evil woman. And the descriptions of her grandsons, flying very high on amphetamines is both sad, awful, and very, very funny. I wanted Danny to escape, somehow, to something better. (I am assuming, too, that he was the "little friend" of Robin.) And poor Eugene, who found "salvation" was just so pathetically unable to be a preacher. I did not care for Harriet, as a person. I don't like people who behave like her. But the character, and that of Hely, her friend, was well described. I loved Harriet's grandmother and aunts. Perfect almost to stereotypic little old southern ladies, yet it didn't feel like a cliche at all. At any rate, this novel was truly absorbing, and I loved it. More, please, Ms. Tartt!
Rating:
Summary: over-the-top prose that smacks of racism and elitism
Review: I was very eager to read this book after having enjoyed The Secret History - but boy, what a bummer! This book feels like it's 5,000 pages long and very familiar. It's like a campy pastiche of cliches from other famous, better books. Even the main character's name seemed contrived - Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, how is one supposed to pronounce that? I am relieved to see that other readers noticed the slightly racist tone of parts of the book. I would like to add that there is classism at foot here too - i.e. Tartt's reprehensible portrayal of the white trash characters, used primarily as comic relief. I wonder how Tartt would feel if she were on the receiving end of that. There is a noticable lack of humanity in these pages that results in boredom. Ten years to produce what? A faux great novel. Can't recommend it, sorry. I hope she get sher act together again. It's just a cryin' shame.
|
