Rating: 
Summary: Magnificently mediocre muddling mess
Review: There is no finer example of the sophomore slump than Donna Tartt's "Little Friend." Muddled, overwritten and bloated with ponderous detail, "Friend" doesn't satisfy with its prose, its plot, or its characters. It's kind of like quicksand -- it may suck you in, but you won't like it a bit.Little Robin Cleve was murdered. Nobody knows who did it (reports of what the "suspicious man" supposedly spotted nearby vary). This crime essentially fractured his family, turning his mom into a hermit, drove away his father, and sending his two sisters into the care of a maid and some (of course) maiden aunts. Twelve years after Robin's death, the trail is cold, but that doesn't stop his sister Harriet from searching for the murderer. Who is it? Harriet decides that it must be Danny Ratliff, one of a family of criminals. (Why does she decide this? Don't ask -- there is no rational reason) Recruiting the help of a friend, Harriet begins trying to get to Danny, to prove that he murdered her brother. Soon she is stalking the Ratliffs -- and takes actions that will change her life forever. "The Little Friend" was a highly anticipated second novel, after the darkly, wittily literate "Secret History." That was written ten years ago, and apparently "Friend" is what Tartt has been occupying herself with since then. Sometimes this book almost reads like a parody of the Southern gothic books, except that Tartt is serious. Really serious. Dead serious. (Look at her picture in the book flap if you don't believe me) A heavy, significant air lies over the entire novel, but the ending is empty and the plot is left flapping in the breeze. Who dunnit? If Tartt herself knows, she ain't telling. Many much-hyped novels read like first drafts, but this doesn't even rise that high. It writes like a book that was started and written for the heck of it, with no real planning or ending in mind. Tartt seems less interested in evoking images or feelings in her readers, than she is in seeing how many words she can use to describe something of no consequence. There are lots of rambling, overlong sentences that trip over themselves. Harriet's precocious intelligence is apparently supposed to impress us. Instead, it seems like she's Tartt's alter ego -- very cynical, obnoxious and a know-it-all. The supporting characters are paper dolls. And when they aren't two-dimensional, they're hampered by so many cliches that they are impossible to take seriously. (Why must every book of this kind have little old maiden aunts? What's with the African-American and redneck stereotypes?) What's more, they're boring. Like the sister Allison, they're prettily written but washed out and colorless. "Little Friend" might have just been boring and plodding, if it had had a real ending. But it doesn't. Instead of being a mystery, a thriller, or a character study, it's just a big soggy lumpy mess. Embarrassing, plotless and leaves a very sour taste in the mouth.
Rating: 
Summary: A beginning, a muddle and finally an end
Review: Donna Tartt's style drew me in quickly and I had high hopes for The Little Friend. Having now ploughed through its 500-some pages I'm certain 300 of them could have been edited.
Is Ms Tartt unable to leave any detail undescribed? Must everything be "like" something else? I cringed at certain synonyms (a rolled-up carpet like a log... an Aunt helps Harriet and Hely over it like a scout leader helping them across... surprise, a log). And why "shrubbery (privet, holly)"? In case readers ignore what shrubbery is? Towards the end I glossed over certain sections, confident they had no bearing on plot or characterization.
Stereotypes abound too, in particular the black maids and housekeepers. It would not have surprised me to hear one of them utter "Mam'zelle Edith".
Suffice to say that as I dutifully read the closing pages, I couldn't have cared less what became of Harriet or Danny and only the urge to be done with the story took me through to its end.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and certainly over-rated
Review: This book was recommended to me, so I felt I had to finish it. Even people who don't like the story seem impressed with the characterisation, but my biggest problem with this and with The Secret History is that I never feel involved in the stories and can barely identify with any of the main characters. Both books appear technically good, but there's little in either beyond an initial good idea. Not recommended. I very nearly didn't finish The Little Friend and won't read any future books by Tartt.
Rating: 
Summary: Good until the last few pages.
Review: I really did enjoy all of this book, and was really excited to get to the ending and find out the answer to the mystery. I was sorely disappointed. The ending is anti-climactic, and that's putting it nicely. I enjoyed the journey to the end but once I got there I felt like reading everything up to that point was a giant waste of time. There were a lot of things I liked about the book, but I can't get past my disappointment. It's fantastic writing and the characters are interesting, but I really want a _story_ if I'm going to read a _novel_.
Rating: 
Summary: Sweet and Sour
Review: Though I was initially drawn to this book because it seemed to promise an American South-based exploration of murder and mystery through the precoucious persepective of a twelve-year old female proatagonist, I was pleased to discover that it is nothing shy of a fantastic multi-faceted American novel full of remarkable character development and plot formation. Tartt tinkers with both character and plot chliches to produce rich and surprising depictions of people and events, consistently twisting our expectations. It's refreshing to encounter a novel that alights on the fundamental presuppostions of the reader, but yet makes no promises, and doesn't obligingly satisfy our need for unreal heroism and reconcilliation.
Rating:
Summary: Waiting for Godot
Review: This novel started out with such promise--an intriguing mystery surrounding the death of a little boy. However, 250 pages into it, I found myself waiting for something to happen. It's a wonderful character sketch--I feel like I know the inner workings of little Harriet's mind intimately--but...yawn...where's the build-up, climax and denouement??
Rating:
Summary: Not sure I'm going to finish it...
Review: I'm about 1/3 through this. When I saw that the kids were about to embark on another escapade I literally sighed and set down the book, wondering how many pages were going to be devoted to a half-hour's worth of action. Each scene starts out interesting, but then it's milked for everything it's worth. Almost literally every step they take is described in excruciating detail. It's plain boring! A lot of the characters are interesting, but nothing happens with them. This is an author who has been over-praised and thinks every word she writes is gold. Speaking of the author, when I first started wondering if I would bother to finish this thing and switch to reading, say, the Dictionary or the phone book, I looked at her picture on the back. Very self-important looking. She looks like someone who would write this book. Bottom line -- I honestly don't know if I'll finish it. Every time I get fed up, something catches my interest. Then it drags on and on again and I start getting fatigued. We'll see.
Rating: 
Summary: In the tradition of the great southern novel
Review: This was a wonderful book -- gloriously written, utterly engaging, and compulsively readable. It has the fluency and authority of a writer at the top of her craft. I love how completely I trusted her rich portrayal of Alexandria -- the smells, the flora and fauna, the sounds, the tastes -- and how completely convinced I was by the characters. I didn't see the richness of her portrayals as needing editing -- on the contrary, as a reader weary of the thin, archly minimalistic writing so popular in contemporary fiction, I was thrilled to find a nice, meaty, old-fashioned novel. This is a novel about a young girl's discovery of the consequences of her actions, and her dawning understanding of the intricacies of guilt and culpability. It isn't a murder mystery, but rather an exploration of the mysteries of the human heart, especially the ways we can violate and betray one another.
Rating:
Summary: THE WORST BOOK EVER WRITTEN
Review: This book was horrible! I cannot even tell you how disappointing it was to start reading it and be totally bored to tears. If I could, I would return and get my money back!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: This book ended up in my trash can
Review: I really was looking forward to reading this book, however, by page 250 or so, I just wanted it to get to the point so I could put it behind me. The author's style of writing is intricate and delicate, making for long and eloquent sentences that wound their way into to paragraphs full of promise and drama. The disappointment, however, is how the author failed to make any of these paragraphs tie into anything even resembling a plot. What is sold to the reader on the back of the book as a mystery, is in actuality a muddle of characters, plots and subplots that have absolutely nothing to do with one another and failed to fully mature. I wasted so much time on plodding through this morass, that by the time I finally reached the wretched, anti-climatic end, I immediately threw the book away in frustration and disappointment. I didn't even feel it was worth of inclusion into my personal library. What a shame.
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