The Little Friend

Omg. I legit do not know how to even begin to write a review. I just finished this book and I'm honestly fuming so it's probably not going to be nice or thoughtful or good. The Little Friend is marketed as a mystery novel, the summary describes it as a mystery of a young boy found hanging in his yard and years later his 12 year old sister goes on a mission to find his killer. That's how the book begins. About 20 pages in, it suddenly veers off to the left to talk about race? Class? Snakes? Nothing at all? And SPOILER ALERT, there is NO closure at the end. The writing is descriptive (read: boring) and I feel like I wasted a week of my life trying to get to the end to find out what happened. Really not sure where the author was trying to go or what message she was trying to send with this book. To be frank, it seems like she wanted to write the story of her own childhood, realized that it was utterly pointless and no one would want to read it unless she made up a subplot. So she slapped a murdered brother on and then just wrote her childhood story.

Summed up: there's a beginning, but no middle, and especially no end. Don't waste your time.

I loved the richness of this story, from our main characters unique personality and adventures, to the long family saga we become familiar with. The POV of a young person accentuates every part of this book, kids are at the mercy of adults, there is a powerlessness and a refuge found in imagination and invention and our main character embodies this. I don't remember reading a book that so carefully and exhaustively renders the inner workings of a kids mind. We see her in full dimensions, we know what drives her, her curiosity for the wide world, we see her try to understand things that kids can't really understand, it's stunning character work. Tartt also weaves into this the relations between white society and black housekeepers in Mississippi, it was powerful and sad esp through the eyes of a kid.

I find myself still thinking about this book even though I finished it weeks ago. I'm shocked how many readers found it boring and slow. Tartt had me fully immersed in this world and I thoroughly enjoyed following along on Harriett's day to day adventures.