The Little Friend
Summary (from the publisher): The hugely anticipated new novel by the author of The Secret History—a best-seller nationwide and around the world, and one of the most astonishing debuts in recent times—The Little Friend is even more transfixing and resonant.
In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes grows up in the shadow of her brother, who—when she was only a baby—was found hanging dead from a black-tupelo tree in their yard. His killer was never identified, nor has his family, in the years since, recovered from the tragedy.
For Harriet, who has grown up largely unsupervised, in a world of her own imagination, her brother is a link to a glorious past she has only heard stories about or glimpsed in photograph albums. Fiercely determined, precocious far beyond her twelve years, and steeped in the adventurous literature of Stevenson, Kipling, and Conan Doyle, she resolves, one summer, to solve the murder and exact her revenge. Harriet’s sole ally in this quest, her friend Hely, is devoted to her, but what they soon encounter has nothing to do with child’s play: it is dark, adult, and all too menacing.
A revelation of familial longing and sorrow, The Little Friend explores crime and punishment, as well as the hidden complications and consequences that hinder the pursuit of truth and justice. A novel of breathtaking ambition and power, it is rich in moral paradox, insights into human frailty, and storytelling brilliance.
In a small Mississippi town, Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes grows up in the shadow of her brother, who—when she was only a baby—was found hanging dead from a black-tupelo tree in their yard. His killer was never identified, nor has his family, in the years since, recovered from the tragedy.
For Harriet, who has grown up largely unsupervised, in a world of her own imagination, her brother is a link to a glorious past she has only heard stories about or glimpsed in photograph albums. Fiercely determined, precocious far beyond her twelve years, and steeped in the adventurous literature of Stevenson, Kipling, and Conan Doyle, she resolves, one summer, to solve the murder and exact her revenge. Harriet’s sole ally in this quest, her friend Hely, is devoted to her, but what they soon encounter has nothing to do with child’s play: it is dark, adult, and all too menacing.
A revelation of familial longing and sorrow, The Little Friend explores crime and punishment, as well as the hidden complications and consequences that hinder the pursuit of truth and justice. A novel of breathtaking ambition and power, it is rich in moral paradox, insights into human frailty, and storytelling brilliance.
Review: This novel follows the summer of 12-year-old Harriet Cleve Dusfresnes, whose childhood has been shaped by the mysterious death by hanging of her older brother when she was just a baby. Her brother's killer was never identified and this event forever altered the world Harriet grew up in, leaving her mother spacey and detached, her father living in another city, and her older sister fragile and sensitive. Enlisting the help of her devoted friend Hely, Harriet spends her summer pursuing who she believes to be her brother's killer and unintentionally being swept up into a dark and adult world.
This novel is not a murder mystery but instead a character study of life after trauma. Harriet is a lonely, misunderstood child with absentee parents. She silently but desperately loves her housekeeper, who she views as her real mother and throughout the novel will desperately appeal to her grandmother and great aunts for insight and guidance that all fail to give her. Everyone in Harriet's family seems less than and somewhat stunted from the loss of little Robin years before.
There are so many dark undercurrents in this novel: drug use, parental neglect, insidious racism, murder. The world 12-year-old Harriet lives in also feels scary and cold, devoid of any comforting figures and full of menacing ones. Everything feels slightly rundown and past its prime, from the grand tales of the demolished family home Tribulation, to Harriet's home that her mother has been slowly filling with newspapers and failing to clean, to the rotting structure of the water tower. And there were so many snakes! Hissing and striking in the grass, in cages, and in cars.
Just like her later novel The Goldfinch, children in this novel are largely orphaned and fending for themselves and violent deaths abound. Tartt is a master of writing from children's points of view and accurately captures the infuriating feeling of being a child and not having any control over your own life and also not being taken seriously by anyone: "It's awful being a child,' she said, simply, 'at the mercy of other people." (324). For Tartt novels, character and setting development is far more vital than plot development. In the end, the reader is left with the sense that seeking justice is futile and we are all just stumbling in the dark, led by circumstances beyond our control.
Stars: 3
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