the little friend - donna tartt
Ah, Donna Tartt. You've got to love her, even if she doesn't have a website. At least, I do. I approached this book with some fear, because I remember reading The Secret History and thinking 'what's the fuss about?', but this one was different. Though maybe if I would re-read Secret History today I might like it more: I think I was a bit too young when I read it.
Difficult to explain why I loved The Little Friend so much. Not a lot happens, there are many, many characters and not all of them are very likeable, Ms Tartt has a couple of annoying habits (like putting in more backstory each and every chapter, enough baby! enough!), and it's a loooong book, but I thought it was brilliant. Daring. Courageous. Spiffing language. Excellent building of tension, very sad in places, in a good, if rather hopeless way. Rosenboom would approve of this, I think.
And the ending... I can't talk about that of course, but I thought that was the best bit of all. Sent me right back to the beginning of the book, made me want to read it all over again. Although I didn't, because there are many more books and projects out there, but I would definitely take this with me if I was going to be marooned on an island for a few months.
09-02-2003
