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    The Little Friend
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    New York

    The Little Friend

    3.5
    €131,00
    €131,00
    €216,00
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    Save 39% (€85,00)
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    Description

    A novel by the author of \'The secret history\', 1e druk / edition / édition / Ausgabe / / English literature / Engels / English / Anglais / Englisch / hard cover / dust jacket / 15 x 24 cm / 555 .pp /
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    Customer Reviews

    One of the Best Books I've Ever ReadHad I paid any attention to the reviews at either Goodreads or Amazon, I might have been dissuaded from reading The Little Friend by those who didn't like the book, calling it "boring", "too long", "bad ending". That would have been a sad thing, because I'm putting it in that Difficult-to-Get-Into club of mine called "One of the Best Books I've Ever Read". It's very hard for me to see this as anything less than a 5-star book, so let me try to convince you readers who are contemplating reading it but are on the fence because of the book's detractors. However, let me temper that with a caution to those who want a quick read, a tied-up-in-a-bow ending, or who aren't willing to get deep into a character and the character's milieu---if you are one of those, go with a John Grisham. The paperback edition I read was a hefty 624-pages, and I savored every one of them.The editor's description of The Little Friend (TLF) will lead you to believe that this is a murder mystery, and perhaps that's why some readers are ticked off that it lacks the typical and expected structure of a murder mystery. In fact, that's likely what enticed me to buy it. But while TLF does, indeed, begin with a mystery---the 12-year old, unsolved murder of the brother of the main character, Harriet. The mystery is also the impetus for the quest that is the book's focus. But the mystery is simply the background and jumping off place. This is really a story about Harriet, one of the most compelling characters I've ever encountered; the town where the story takes place (Alexandria, Mississippi); and the recently desegregated and deeply racist social climate in which the action occurs.Harriet was a baby when her brother, Robin, is murdered. When we meet her 12 years later, she's like an urchin from a Dickens' story. If it were not for the inconsistent and eclectic parenting she receives from the family's African-American housekeeper, her stern and cold grandmother, and a gaggle of great-aunts, Harriet would be just a step away from being raised by wolves. Her mother has been in a drug-induced slumber since the day of the murder, and her father lives in Nashville and only visits on holidays.Harriet is an old soul. She's intelligent, indomitable, opinionated, delightfully odd, and very well-read. The tales of Kipling, Stevenson, Doyle, and those of true-life adventurers fuel her imagination. A summer without the structure and diversion of school, and the general lack of parental supervision the children receive, provide a fertile ground in which Harriet and her devoted acolyte, Hely, set out to find Robin's killer. But, again, though it's an important one, this "detecting" is simply the backstory.TLF's prologue is one of the best I've ever read. It begins: "For the rest of her life, Charlotte Cleve would blame herself for her son's death because she had decided to have the Mother's Day dinner at six in the evening instead of noon, which is when the Cleves usually had it." Its 15 pages concisely and brilliantly provide us with everything we need to know to prepare us for the rest of the story. We clearly understand the family dynamics and a bit of its history. We meet many of the characters and, in very few words, we learn a lot about each one of them. We know the horrific event that forever after alters the family and sets in motion its disintegration. But from that point forward, each subsequent chapter is minutely detailed. Many readers found that maddening, but others, like me, loved and appreciated those details. I found myself rereading passages to savor them, and noticing now beautifully crafted and essential all those lovely words were.One of the things that I found the most amazing was how well Tartt captured the time and place: the casual and cruel racism, the decaying town, the cadence and sound of the voices across the spectrum of social classes; and the thinking of the children: their fertile imaginations, their terrible decisions, the pains they must endure at the hands of the careless and unthinking adults who rule their worlds. My early childhood was spent in a small Missouri town in the 1950s, and Tartt's descriptions brought back the sights, sounds, and feelings (both physical and emotional) of that time and place.Other reviewers have compared TLF to To Kill a Mockingbird and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I was also making those comparisons. But to be clear, TLF by no means mimics those books---it holds its own and is unique in its voice, but it shares the keen sense of place and the uncanny understanding of the characters' interior lives that those other books have.Many reviewers complained about the book's ending. I'm trying not to spoil it for readers by what I'm going to say next, so if you are even a tad concerned about that, stop reading this review now. The ending is not all tied up in a bow, with the author going over clues we should have picked up on, and detailing for us why the killer did what he/she did. If you are expecting such an ending, this book won't deliver. But I contend that Tartt wrote the perfect ending for this particular book. It's is purposefully and carefully written, and A Little Friend would be a completely different book with anything but the ending Tartt gives us. I believe that the Prologue and ending are a pair of perfectly matched bookends.I loved this book and highly recommend it for people who want beautifully written prose and a whopping good story. I'm in awe of Donna Tartt's talent and insight into the human spirit, and immensely glad I found her. I'm reading Tartt's The Secret History next. 5Not a murder mystery, just starts with a murder and then is about a 12 year old coming of age. Painful to complete.If you are thinking of purchasing this book because the description makes you think it s a Southern Gothic murder mystery- DON T! I have no idea why Harriet seeking her brother s killer is the main blurb. The book is a coming of age story about a white girl in the South learning to be kinder to the help with a side note that poor people can have good hearts, too.I loved The Goldfinch and this book sounded so promising based on the description, but the description of the book is not what the book is about. So unless you want to read a dollar store version of The Help that is mainly filled with verbal wandering describing the landscape- I would recommend skipping this one. 2A seriously important novelI have just read this novel for the second time. The first time I read it, it was shocking, scary and heart-breaking. I came back to it for a second, more deliberative reading, after hearing a book reviewer say that 'Wuthering Heights' was the most important novel of the 19th century - and perhaps of all time, and my immediate reaction was that I could think of many novels that were more important for the 20th - 21st centuries. 'The Little Friend' is, in my opinion, a seriously important novel. Not room here to discuss in detail, but a few pointers. A story of the South, set mainly in around 1980 (as far as I could date it), looking back through the generations to the building of the Cleve family home, Tribulation House, where Judge Cleve died leaving four daughters in the late 1960s, and the final ruin of the old home. His great-grand-daughter, Harriet, was a baby when her brother was found hanging from a tree in the yard, as the family were about to sit down for a Mothers Day supper, twelve years earlier, and that unsolved mystery, and the after-effects of Robin's death loom very largely in the family, and he is not forgotten in the town. At the same time, there is another family, the Ratliffs - the grandmother can remember working in the cotton fields near Tribulation House - and their life is contrasted with that of the Cleves. Farish Ratcliff is more vivid than Dickens's Bill Sykes, in my opinion. And there are the servants - Ida is a key character, providing not only domestic labour for a pittance, but giving shape to Harriet's days, while her mother, still trapped in a drugged, grieving half-life, can wake to a complete confusion of night and day.The author seems to lightly drop allusions into her writing - black birds, sometimes crows, feature regularly, so that I had old tunes 'sing a song of blackbirds ...' for one, in the back of my mind - maybe you'll make more out of it than I could, but I think her main concern is the damage done to people, especially children, by circumstances beyond their control (and I thought of Dickens often in this, apart from her earlier novel 'The Greenfinch'). But in the end, in spite of the painful, scary and shocking aspects of this book, I sensed some optimism: no happy-ever-after ending, but possibilities. No firm solutions, or resolutions, but glimmerings of hope that some aspects of all these lives might change for the better. 5No GoldfinchI read this book because The Goldfinch is one of the best books I have ever read. But I was sorely disappointed in this book. The entire time I was reading it I debated whether or not it was worth finishing. But I kept with it to find out what happened. The ending was abrupt and provided no resolution. So all in all, I endured a very dark story about sad people with no satisfaction. 1A real chore to readThe book begins with a lot of promise . . . and a strong premise for a central plot. However, the author starts so many story threads without satisfactorily resolving any of them that I lost interest halfway through. It was a selection for my book club; so I stuck with it until the end. Otherwise I would have stopped reading it. This was such a tedious read that I started to hope that something disastrous would happen to the main character just to have some excitement. Boring! 1A stranger, darker, better cousin to The Goldfinch"The Little Friend is set in the American South. It starts with a grisly murder of a 9-year-old boy. More than a decade later, his younger sister vows to find and punish the perpetrator."Frankly, I'm tempted to leave it at that, and let you discover the chameleonic nature of the book by yourself. Because, y'see, The Little Friend is nothing like its more acclaimed successor that you've probably read first. Despite the troubled protagonist, dark undertones and numerous plot zigzags, you somehow knew from the very first pages that The Goldfinch was a straightforward redemption tale headed towards the inevitable happy ending. With The Little Friend, you're never sure. It starts as a murder mystery (which it definitely is not), then turns into a tale of revenge, then morphs into something else entirely. Its heroine, Harriet, is a brilliant, resourceful, stubborn and independent teenage girl, but her grief and obsession with revenge eventually make her into a much more... complicated character. Its finale, while pretty uneventful compared to that of The Goldfinch, somehow seems much more definitive.I'd really hate to be more specific about the plot or even technical details, and spoil the numerous ways the book screws with your assumptions. I just want to add a word of warning: just as The Goldfinch contains too many overly lengthy and dull passages, this book contains many characters that contribute little to the story and plotlines that are not resolved in any meaningful way. It annoyed me quite a lot, but after finishing the novel, I sort of started seeing it as a feature, not a bug: every false trail and every shaggy dog subplot contribute to the point that in our search for the right answers, for the solution to a mystery, for closure we may miss a grander truth. So if you find yourself put off by the book's seeming incoherence, try to persevere. It's worth it. 4ConfusingThere is no sense of closure after struggling through this convoluted story. Unpleasant, ignorant, racist characters whose feelings and actions are not explored with any insight. I didn't like the preachers or kids or drug using criminals or self absorbed parents with much difference in intensity. The ending leaves the reader hanging with multiple questions. The actions throughout are unlikely products of the children who are central characters. The adults are sleepwalking through their lives and oblivious to the acts and risk taking of the kids. Overall an unsatisfying read and characters I want never to encounter again. 1Definitely the worst book I ve ever finished readingBoring and pointless without a resolution to anything. Not a likable character in the book, just a lot of depressing yuck. No conclusion at all, I honestly thought I was missing the last part of the story. Can I get a refund on the hours of my life I wasted??I m a born and bred Mississippian, so I have to ask if this lady is serious or making fun of us? Meth wasn t even a thing in rural Mississippi in the late 70 s. No one was a meth head back then, not even the red necks. And NOBODY had maids by that time, rich or poor. A true southern lady prided herself on running her own household.I can t believe this woman won a Pulitzer Prize! What s happening??? This book is a blow to my faith in humanity. AWFUL! 1IncredibleI was late to the party on being a Donna Tartt fan, having read "The Goldfinch" first before "The Little Friend." The first thought that came to mind when I finished this book is there are those that write, and then there are those that tell the world how it is done by breaking the mold and creating from a space of their own devil-may-care, permissive making. Donna Tartt's writing is nonnegotiable; it's in a league of its own, so I'll simply stand in admiration of her deft skills and comment on what I see as her writer's personality, if you will, with regard to this book: Donna Tartt is a died-in-the-wool Southerner. It pours from the crevices of every paragraph in her literary accuracy of Southern language, nuance, priority, and characterization. I've read many a Southern writer ( and am a Southerner myself) yet can not think of anyone who delves down to the nitty-gritty in quite the same manner. It is more than her awareness of Southern parlance, what she handles adroitly is the underbelly of Southern mentality. In this book, she tap-dances on themes of denial, emotional isolation, class separation and self-righteous arrogance all through the vehicle of character. She writes through the lens of a vantage point with such a brutal glare as to make me wince, yet she is accurate. I didn't feel the warm, fuzzy comfort of beauty in this book, I felt an edgy cynicism instead and willingly accepted the tone. Tartt takes a simple premise: young Harriet Dufresne, of Alexandria, Mississippi, lives beneath the weight of the unresolved murder of her brother and seeks to find answers to a tragedy of which no one will address. That is the story in a nutshell, yet Tartt coaxes mile upon mile of humanistic fodder that goes beyond a painstaking, five-senses experience; her writing is so panoramic she holds the reader captive in describing a walk around the block. I take my hat off to Donna Tartt and will simplify by saying this: Donna Tartt is such a master storyteller, whatever she's selling, I'll buy. 5Long and painful with uninteresting but well rounded characters.I enjoyed the Goldfinch (for the most part) and loved The Secret History so I set off on this one in earnest. Well, it sucked.It's been a few months since I read it but I still feel compelled to leave a review because it was that much of a disappointment. Perhaps the problem is me since there are rave reviews on here as well, but I just did not emotionally connect with a single character in this story, which of course made it quite boring.Sure, it's incredibly well written. And yes the story is interesting in parts. The characters are very well rounded too. But mostly this is dreary and drawn out and not much actually happens.The grandmother & grandaunts were lovely, the mother was infuriating, the kid frankly painful, and the hicks, just, annoying.I enjoyed parts of this story (an estimated 10%) but I ended up skim reading paragraphs because it just went on and on and on in laborious detail about I don't even know what anymore, it has faded and blurred with the time.I wouldn't recommend this as a first book to read of Tartt's, or at all, really. 2
    The Little Friend

    The Little Friend

    3.5
    You can't add more than 500 quantity.
    €131,00
    €131,00
    €216,00
    Sold out
    Save 39% (€85,00)