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Sep 18, 2010

Leslie rated it:

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11 comments like (43 people liked it)

May 29, 2008

Tee rated it:

Currently reading this one and all I can think of is a passage from a writing-fiction manual that I read. The guy who wrote the article said that he once wrote a whole book and his publisher told him that it was good back-story, it was good for the AUTHOR to get to know his characters so when he wrote about them - they'd be 3D and real - but it wasn't necessary for the readers to know most of the stuff that was written. You can remove a lot of the bulk from that first draft, keep it to yourself, More...

7 comments like (28 people liked it)

Sep 05, 2011

Tina rated it:

I sort of want to scream when I read lukewarm reviews of this book. Admittedly, people may get the wrong idea when they read the back jacket, or the first few pages, and anticipate some sort of murder mystery thrill.
The death of Harriet's brother is merely background for her character. The skill with which Tartt explores the inner workings and thought processes of a virtually abandoned 12 year old girl whose older brother's murder has never been solved cannot be praised highly enough. Tartt More...

4 comments like (15 people liked it)

Dec 29, 2009

Madeline rated it:

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24 comments like (18 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2008

Stacey rated it:

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0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Oct 28, 2007

Lord rated it:

I gave this book three stars only because of the author's ability to use mood, setting, and descriptive in an incredibly amazing way. However, this book was the biggest cocktease ever. Chekhov once said that if a gun is laying on the table in the first scene it had better be fired by the last. I firmly believe this, but Ms. Tartt seems not to. Oh well. It just seems that if you begin a book with a nine-year-old boy hanging dead from a tree, and the entire plot is driven from this, something shou More...

3 comments like (10 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Lauren rated it:

This is such a great novel. I read it a few years ago, I think it was in 2004, I don't really remember now, but I know it was before I separated from Fabio since during the separation process I only read books by Chris Bojalian and books that Lauren mailed me. She didn't mail me The Little Friend, but I'm sure it is she who recommended it. Just last night, I was talking with my friend Jenna about this book (which I convinced her to read, and which she is reading now) and we were cracking up o More...

0 comments like (7 people liked it)

Mar 01, 2008

Chrissie rated it:

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2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 22, 2008

Patrick rated it:

Donna really screws the pooch on this one. She makes a very likeable character, a smart, precocious little girl in a small country town who makes enemies with a group of meth-heads while trying to solve the mystery of her 9-year-old brother's hanging when she was a baby, and turns it into a 576-page snoozefest. I eventually had to go to a library miles away and check out the audio version so I didn't have to waste my precious eyesight reading it. I read this one review where the person said t More...

4 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 25, 2009

Jamie rated it:

For two weeks, I breathed and slept this book. I was reminded of Joyce Carol Oates, We were the Mulvaney's--specifically due to character development. I remember being in awe for most of We Were the Mulvaney's--the characters, and there were many, were just...intensely developed. I read a lot, and these characters were the stuff of real life: diverse, with nicknames, private histories and nuances. This novel, in the tradition of Oates, managed the same feat. Carson McCullers is in there, to More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Mar 17, 2009

Margaret B. rated it:

I've finally finished this book after starting and stopping it for seven years. It was evocative in a 1970s-era Southern gothic way and really made you as the reader feel like you were living in this small Mississippi town along with the characters, however, it was so slow-moving as to almost be called boring. It's character-driven the first 75% of the book, and the last 25%, the plot finally kicks in, but at that point, it's almost too late. Tartt frustratingly never resolves the central myst More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 08, 2010

Emily rated it:

I knew that Tartt's first book was a sort of murder mystery, and since there's a murder in the first ten pages of this one, I expected it to be a traditional whodunit in literary clothing. It is both less and more than that, slowing talking you out of your expectations and persuading you to accept its presentation.

The book has a disconcertingly languid mood, slow like molasses. Three of the seven chapters are mostly concerned with setting the scene; of those "The Blackbird" a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 01, 2008

Laura rated it:

"With Ida had vanished many comforts. Among them was sleep. Night after night, in dank Chickadee Wigwam, Harriet had lain awake in gritty sheets with tears in her eyes--for no one but Ida knew how to make the bed the way she liked it, and Harriet (in motels, sometimes even at Edie's house) lay open-eyed and miserable with homesickness late into the night, painfully aware of strange textures, unfamiliar smells (perfume, mothballs, detergents that Ida didn't use), but more than anything else More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 16, 2008

Kellie rated it:

This book was not what I expected at all. The cover makes you think it’s about a young girl trying to figure out who killed her little brother. That is some of what the book is about, but there is so much more. Too much in my opinion. This was one of the longest books I ever had to get through. And for the first time in several years, I almost quit reading a book. It took till the middle of the book before it became remotely interesting to me. The story is about a family. A very dysfunct More...

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Jul 26, 2007

Donna rated it:

This book was the July selection for the mystery book club I belong to at Barnes & Noble. For some strange reason, it seems the book is being marketed as a mystery, which is probably why many readers don't finish it or are disappointed when they do. Beef bourguignon may be great stuff, but it could be a let down if you were expecting pizza.

Unfortunately, it me took about 300 pages (about half the book) to figure out that I wasn't reading a mystery. After that, I stopped expecting any More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 05, 2007

Siria rated it:

I didn't adore this as much as I did The Secret History; possibly because it just simply didn't have the page turning thrill that the last book had. That doesn't mean that it's not damn impressive though, and a book that I read quite slowly in order to savour it for as long as possible.

As ever, the characterisation is wonderful. Harriet and Hely, Charlotte and Ida Rhew, Farish and Gum, Edie and Eugene were all drawn wonderfully. Complex and never really likeable, they were all still More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 29, 2007

Lee rated it:

This is Tartt's second book, and there are only two. I read this directly after I read her fantastic debut, "The Secret History". The first novel was published in 1992, and fans had to wait over ten years for this second effort.

This is a terrific book, and it inspired in me the same voracity as "The Secret History". However, this book is certainly more laborious, more troubled than Tartt's debut. It tells many, many stories, most specifically of 12-year old Harrie More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2008

Vanessa rated it:

Well, I debated whether or not to give this book three or four stars and then settled on three because I was disappointed with the last quarter of the book. She's a great writer with really fleshed-out, interesting characters. But I thought the book was going to go somewhere else and then it just didn't feel like it lived up to its potential. Tartt had generated all of this great tension leading up to the face-off between the two central characters and then when it came, it just didn't really wo More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Julz rated it:

I loved Secret History, but I was disappointed in this novel overall, especially after waiting so many years in between books!

There were some great chapters in this book, but overall it was too long and got too deep into that weird snake-charming stuff.

Like many novels which follow a great debut, it went over the top and ruined itself. It's almost like authors get scared by too much initial success and then try too hard. An example from a completely different genre wou More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 17, 2007

Holly rated it:

I was so excited to get this book on audio since I love Tartt's first novel. This book is equally charasmatic and strange as The Secret History, but it's both more broadly-appealing and more clumsily written. It could have used a sharp-eyed editor as the second half of the book gets less focused and harder to wade through all the subplots, and loses a lot of readers (according to the reviews here as well as my friends' comments). That said, it's a fine Southern Gothic tale and the female charact More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 05, 2007

Erin rated it:

After reading and loving the Secret History, I ran to the library when Donna Tartt's (long overdue) second effort was released. Though the beginning entices you with a gripping mystery, 575 tedious pages later the payoff for hanging in through the long-winded and overly descriptive body of this novel was a disappointing, unrealistic dead-end. The only thing I found interesting was the protagonist, a precocious child who is too smart for her own good. However impressive character development is, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 30, 2007

sara rated it:

I don't remember that much about it now, other than... oh wait, I shouldn't reveal. Anyway, me not remembering could be a sign of laclusterness (I like my new word!) or it could just be a result of my ways. Either way, this book was alright - a big disappointment after The Secret History. It could have fared a lot better if she had tied it up in the end. Her ending totally failed... actually there WASN'T one, which did not work. Sorry, Donna, it's hard to live up to the whole debuting geni More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 02, 2009

Monique rated it:

Deja vu..I know I read this book before but couldnt remember it so I read it again..good thing this book was cute and moved fast..So the plot, a family in grief over a child's death twelve years ago is the backstory and the main character Harriet, the dead boy's brother is adorable and smart and it is her goal to find out what happened to her brother..After researching, going through family and personal drama she thinks she uncovers the murderer (which is weird how she got to this conclusion whe More...

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Jan 30, 2012

La Reyne rated it:

How to define this novel.

I had a dekko at a few reviews to see the responses of other people, and the broad consensus appears to be a lot of frustration and confusion!

It's a book that leads to no pat ending or conclusion. Yet the getting to that - point? - is so rich and worthwhile. We are trained from our first reading experiences to expect beginning, middle and end. We need the payoff. The money shot, if you must...and this book does lead you to think that the r More...

0 comments like

Aug 07, 2011

Yvonne rated it:

Harriet Cleves Desfesnes is my new heroine. A 12 year old girl, with a brave and adventurous soul living amidst family dysfunction resulting from her brother's death 11 years earlier. Set in the deep south every character in the book jumps to life, the writing is incredible.

There is Harriet, a young girl with a quest for knowledge and understanding, her sad sister Allison who lives to sleep and her mom, strung out on mother's little helpers and rarely leaving her bedroom. Harriet is surroun More...

0 comments like

Aug 05, 2011

Kerith rated it:

I loved, loved, loved SECRET HISTORY but it took me a long time to remember to pick this one up. Once I did, though, I was hooked. What a perfect summer read. Donna Tartt's writing skills are incomparable -- this is not a tale I would typically read but she brings the characters (most of whom are hard to like) completely to life as well as she does with the poor Southern town of Alexandria. 12-year-old Harriet has grown up mostly in a state of benign neglect after her family fell apart from grie More...

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Jul 30, 2011

Jamie rated it:

I absolutely loved Tartt's first novel, The Secret History - read it at least 3 times. I was excited, understandably, to read her second novel, especially as it was a long time coming. I have to agree with most of the Goodreads reviews I've read: great book/most frustrating book ever. The prologue set me up with the expectation that this would be a murder mystery, and I anticipated that Harriet, the main character, and other characters, would make some disastrously bad choices, as per the fir More...

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Jul 23, 2011

Stephanie rated it:

Donna Tartt’s novel The Little Friend is an excellent example of contemporary American Gothic literature. I absolutely love the character of Harriet, and actually preferred TLF to The Secret History. I realise that most people don't like the ending (or lack thereof) but I thought it was incredible, the way that Tartt underlined the whole message of the text in that last exchange. Not everything needs to be neatly resolved, and I think there are clues throughout the novel for the reader to dra More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2011

Angela rated it:

Harriet Dufresnes was a six month old baby when her 9 year old brother Robin was found hanging from a tree in the family's backyard. The murder was never solved, and Robin's death shattered the family.
Twelve years later, Harriet is determined to track down the killer. Over the course of the summer, Harriet and her best friend Hely identify who they believe is the killer and set out to kill him.

I have a love/hate relationship with this book. On the one hand, I loved the characters More...

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Feb 02, 2011

Christie rated it:

Almost 20 years ago I stumbled upon Donna Tartt’s fantastic novel The Secret History, a novel which has stayed with me all these years. Having recently finished her second novel (and I believe there was almost ten years between the two books), I now have an overwelming desire to re-read The Secret History to see if it’s as good as I remember. I wonder if I’ll be saying the same thing about The Little Friend in 20 years?

There’s no doubt, Tartt is a talented writer. The Little Friend i More...

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