The Little Friend is the second novel by the American author, Donna Tartt. The novel was initially published by Alfred A. Knopf on October 22, 2002, a decade after her first novel, The Secret History.
The Little Friend is a mystery adventure, centered on a young girl, Harriet Cleve Dufresnes, living in Mississippi in the early 1970s. The story follows Harriet's anxiety surrounding the unexplained death of her brother, Robin, who was killed by hanging in 1964 at the age of nine.[1] As well, the dynamics of Harriet's extended family–particularly her aunts–are a strong focus of the novel, as are the lifestyles and customs of contrasting Southerners.
In an interview with 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." Tartt told the interviewer that The Little Friend was intentionally different from 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."[1]
Plot
In the mid-1960s, on Mother's Day, Robin, the eldest child and only son of the Dufresnes, a white family living in Mississippi, is found hanging from a tree on the family property. Only nine years old at the time of his death, Robin's murder causes his mother, Charlotte, to sink into a listless depression and his father, Dixon, to abandon the family on the pretext of work.
Twelve years later Robin's two younger sisters, Allison and Harriet, are now sixteen and twelve years old, respectively. Harriet, the younger child, is considered particularly difficult as she is intensely smart but uncompromising. Harriet has developed a morbid fascination with her brother and with the past of her matrilineal family, the Cleves. Her great-grandfather, Judge Cleve, once owned the local mansion, "Tribulation", but lost the family's wealth in his declining years.
Harriet's fascination with her brother's death leads her to decide to find the murderer with the reluctant help of her younger but devoted friend, a boy, Hely Hull. The Dufresnes' stalwart black maid, Ida Rhew, reveals that Robin had a fight with another boy shortly before his death. Harriet discovers that the boy is Danny Ratliff, the son of a highly dysfunctional local methamphetamine producing family. Farish Ratliff, an elder brother, runs the drug business with the help of Danny and the connivance of his grandmother, Gum. Farish, not a particularly intelligent man, is planning a drug shipment hidden within a truck transporting venomous snakes, which another brother, Eugene, uses to support his Evangelical preaching.
Harriet believes that Danny is the murderer and resolves to exact revenge by stealing a cobra kept by Eugene, and dropping it into Danny's Trans Am vehicle. Harriet is also distraught at her parents' mean-spirited dismissal of the much loved Ida. After a near disastrous encounter with the Ratliffs when the brothers attempt to transport the drugs, Harriet and Hely manage to steal the cobra from Eugene's office. They proceed to drop the snake into the Trans Am from an abandoned road bridge but discover that the car was driven not by Danny but by his grandmother, Gum, who is severely bitten and hospitalized. The Ratliffs deduce that Harriet had been involved in the attack and seek her out after she returns early from summer camp following the death of her favourite great-aunt.
Danny resolves to steal some of his own family's drugs and use them to buy his way out of town. Danny knows that drugs were hidden by his brother, after the failed shipment, in a water tower where they are also discovered by Harriet who throws them into the water. Farish becomes increasingly deranged by the consumption of his own product and violently forces Danny to take him for a drive. Danny drives towards the water tower where he fatally shoots Farish.
After killing his brother, Danny discovers Harriet in the water tower and attempts to drown her. Harriet, who has been coincidentally practicing holding her breath, pretends to drown but is able to escape when the non-swimming Danny falls back into the water. Harriet climbs out of the tank, but the ladder collapses behind her leaving Danny to drown.
Harriet's father, Dixon, visits her while she is recovering from her ordeal in hospital and reveals that Danny had in fact been Robin's "little friend" and was distraught when he heard of Robin's death. The authorities never discover Harriet and Hely's involvement with the Ratliffs, as her doctors consider her condition to be the result of an epileptic episode.
However, Danny does not drown in the tank. Instead, he is arrested there and charged with his brother's murder.
Ultimately, the novel ends with the identity of Robin's murderer remaining a mystery.
Themes
The book largely focuses on the life of Harriet and her friend Hely as they investigate the death of Harriet's brother Robin. Throughout the book, Harriet references Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, a book about the life of Robert Falcon Scott and a fairy tale about the King of Snakes while, in contrast, Hely often references From Russia with Love.
Happiness and methods of coping with tragedy are explored throughout the book, mostly as character study. Many of the adults of the book, from Harriet's neglectful mother Charlotte, to Harriet's tough grandmother Edie view life from a defeated and cautious standpoint, respectively, in contrast with the more optimistic youthful outlook of the steadfast, brave Harriet and Hely. The outlaw brothers Farish Ratliff and Danny Ratliff, caught up in a world of drugs, seem miserable most the time. Few outwardly happy characters exist in the book besides Curtis Ratliff and the car salesman Roy Dial.
The social culture of Mississippi is featured throughout the book.
Death is a theme explored in the book along with the cheating of death. For Harriet, this fascination stems from her brother Robin's murder before she was old enough to know him. But this is also shown via Harriet's interest in Houdini, references to Lazarus in the Baptist church after Robin dies, Harriet's reading about Robert Falcon Scott, Harriet's practicing holding her breath to imitate Houdini's underwater tricks, and at the climax of the story, Harriet's escape from Danny Ratliff by playing dead in the water tower by holding her breath. Danny Ratliff also escapes death in the water tower - not knowing how to swim - by jumping up from the bottom of the water tower tank for two days to grab breaths of air until he is discovered. The snake-handling preacher from Kentucky, Loyal Reese, represents a form of cheating death with his numerous boxes of venomous snakes and his preaching style. In unrelated incidents, Gum Ratliff and Eugene Ratliff are bitten by those venomous snakes and both survive. Farish Ratliff is said to have survived a gunshot wound to the head earlier in his life, while he dies with the second shot to the head later in the book. Hely cheats death after releasing Loyal's venomous snakes in Eugene's office while attempting to escape unnoticed. After Harriet's great aunt Libby dies, Harriet's fascination with death becomes more intense and sad, but the author seems to reference her grandmother Edith in Harriet's behavior.
Extended family dynamics and support systems are another theme of the book. In the wake of Robin's death, a network that includes Harriet's grandmother Edith, Harriet's three great aunts - Libby, Tat, and Adelaide - and the housekeeper Ida coalesce to help raise Harriet and Allison while their mother retreats to her bedroom most days and her father moves to another state for his job and has an extended affair.
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,"[2] while Scott described the book as "tragic, fever-dream realism."[3]
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers. A dilettante who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective. He is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; by his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and, in a few books, by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife.
Thrones, Dominations is a Lord Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane murder mystery novel that Dorothy L. Sayers began writing but abandoned, and which remained at her death as fragments and notes. It was completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published in 1998. The title is a quotation from John Milton's Paradise Lost and refers to two categories of angel in the Christian angelic hierarchy.
Hallowe'en Party is a work of detective fiction by English writer Agatha Christie, first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club in November 1969 and in the United States by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed for 25 shillings. In preparation for decimalisation on 15 February 1971, it was priced on the dustjacket at £1.25. The US edition retailed at $5.95. This book was dedicated to writer P. G. Wodehouse.
The Rules of Attraction is a satirical black comedy novel by Bret Easton Ellis published in 1987. The novel follows a handful of rowdy and often promiscuous, spoiled bohemian students at a liberal arts college in 1980s New Hampshire, including three who develop a love triangle. The novel is written in first person narrative, and the story is told from the points of view of various characters.
Donna Louise Tartt is an American novelist and essayist. Her novels are The Secret History (1992), The Little Friend (2002), and The Goldfinch (2013). She was included in Time magazine's 2014 "100 Most Influential People" list. The Goldfinch has been adapted into a film.
The Last Juror is a 2004 legal thriller novel by John Grisham, first published by Doubleday on February 3, 2004.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by herself is an autobiography by Harriet Jacobs, a mother and fugitive slave, published in 1861 by L. Maria Child, who edited the book for its author. Jacobs used the pseudonym Linda Brent. The book documents Jacobs's life as a slave and how she gained freedom for herself and for her children. Jacobs contributed to the genre of slave narrative by using the techniques of sentimental novels "to address race and gender issues." She explores the struggles and sexual abuse that female slaves faced as well as their efforts to practice motherhood and protect their children when their children might be sold away.
The Secret History is the first novel by the American author Donna Tartt, published by Alfred A. Knopf in September 1992. Set in New England, the campus novel tells the story of a closely knit group of six classics students at Hampden College, a small, elite liberal arts college located in Vermont based upon Bennington College, where Tartt was a student between 1982 and 1986.
Danny Moon is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera EastEnders, played by Jake Maskall. He made his first appearance on 30 December 2004 and was initially axed in July 2005, but reappeared on 21 March 2006 and was killed off on 31 March 2006.
The River is a 1951 American Technicolor drama romance film directed by Jean Renoir shot in Calcutta, India where the Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray, then a student of cinema met him for guidance. It was fully filmed in India.
A Prisoner of Birth is a mystery novel by English author Jeffrey Archer, first published on 6 March 2008 by Macmillan. This book is a contemporary retelling of Dumas's 1844 novel The Count of Monte Cristo. The novel saw Archer return to the first place in the fiction best-seller list for the first time in a decade.
"Pigeons from Hell" is a horror short story by American writer Robert E. Howard, written in late 1934 and published posthumously by Weird Tales in 1938. The title comes from an image in Howard's grandmother's ghost stories, that of a deserted plantation mansion haunted by pigeons. It was re-written and adapted by Joe R. Lansdale with art by Nathan Fox and published in four issues by Dark Horse Comics, starting in April 2008.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a 2009 Swedish-Danish crime thriller film with German co-production directed by Niels Arden Oplev from a screenplay by Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel and produced by Søren Stærmose, based on the 2005 novel of the same name by Swedish writer Stieg Larsson, the first entry in his Millennium series. The film stars Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace.
Horns is a 2010 dark fantasy novel by Joe Hill and is the author's second published novel. The novel also incorporates elements of contemporary fantasy, crime fiction, and Gothic fiction. It employs the third-person omniscient, nonlinear narrative in telling the story of Ig Perrish, who—in the aftermath of his girlfriend Merrin Williams' mysterious rape and murder—awakes one morning to find horns growing from his head and diabolical powers at his command.
The Goldfinch is a novel by the American author Donna Tartt. It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, among other honors. Published in 2013, it was Tartt's first novel since The Little Friend in 2002.
The Cuckoo's Calling is a 2013 crime fiction novel written by J. K. Rowling, and published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. It is the first novel in the Cormoran Strike series of detective novels and was followed by The Silkworm in 2014, Career of Evil in 2015, Lethal White in 2018, Troubled Blood in 2020 and The Ink Black Heart in 2022. A seventh book The Running Grave was released on 26 September 2023.
Cormoran Strike is a series of crime fiction novels written by British author J. K. Rowling, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The story chronicles the cases of the fictional British private detective Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott. Seven novels in the series have so far been published. Rowling stated after the third book that she has plans for at least another ten. The seventh novel, titled The Running Grave, was released on 26 September 2023.
Young Sherlock Holmes: Snake Bite is the fifth novel in the Young Sherlock Holmes series that depicts Arthur Conan Doyle's detective Sherlock Holmes as a teenager in the 1860s. It was written by author Andy Lane and released in 2013.
When the Music's Over is the 23rd novel by Canadian detective fiction writer Peter Robinson in the Inspector Banks series, published in 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
