The Little Friend is the second novel by Donna Tartt, initially published by Alfred A. Knopf on October 22, 2002, a decade after her first novel, The Secret History.
Superficially, The Little Friend is a mystery adventure, centered on a young girl, Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, living in Mississippi in the early 1970s and her implicit anxieties about the unexplained death of her brother Robin, who was killed by hanging in 1964 at the age of nine. The dynamics of Harriet's extended family are a strong focus of the novel, as are the lifestyles and customs of contrasting Southerners.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2002, Tartt described The Little Friend as "a frightening, scary book about children coming into contact with the world of adults in a frightening way." She told the interviewer that The Little Friend was intentionally different than The Secret History, stating "I wanted to take on a completely different set of technical problems. The Secret History was all from the point of view of Richard, a single camera, but the new book is symphonic, like War And Peace. That's widely thought to be the most difficult form."
Video The Little Friend
Reception
Both Ruth Franklin of The New Republic and A. O. Scott of The New York Times reviewed the book positively. Franklin highlighted Tartt's literary "obsess[ion] with crimes that go unpunished". Scott described the book as "tragic, fever-dream realism."
The novel won the WH Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2003. The jacket design is by Chip Kidd.
Maps The Little Friend
References
External links
- David Hare review in Guardian Unlimited (October 27, 2002)
- Oxonian Review: "Donna Tartt's Confused Little Friend"
- Video
- RTE TV panel discussion
- Audio
- NPR: Talk of the Nation: Donna Tartt interviewed by Lynn Neary (November 5, 2002)
- Donna Tartt reads The Little Friend at a Jackson, Mississippi bookstore (November 13, 2002)
Source of article : Wikipedia
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